Abstract
The article starts with a typical figure for the Russian émigré life in Paris between the two wars — a taxi driver, a hero in G. Gazdanov’s novel Night Roads [ Nochnie dorogi ]. The protagonist reveals an unusual perceptiveness and existential experience. The study of the driving profession goes on to include A. Borshchagovsky’s short story Three Poplars in Shabolovka [ Tri topolya na Shabolovke ], as well as its film adaptation by T. Lioznova. This leads the authors to the conclusion about the taxi driver as a representation of the existential hero in 20th-century Russian prose.