Yann Martel - Literature Literature Westwood Creative Artists Biography Yann Martel was born in Salamanca, Spain, in 1963, of Canadian parents who were doing graduate studies. Later they both joined the Canadian foreign service and he grew up in Costa Rica, France, Spain and Mexico, in addition to Canada. He continued to travel widely as an adult, spending time in Iran, Turkey and India, but is now based mainly in Montreal. He obtained a degree in Philosophy from Trent University in Ontario, then worked variously as a tree planter, dishwasher and security guard before taking up writing full-time from the age of 27. His first book, The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, was published in 1993 and is a collection of short stories, dealing with such themes as illness, storytelling and the history of the twentieth century; music, war and the anguish of youth; how we die; and grief, loss and the reasons we are attached to material objects. This was followed by his first novel, Self (1996), a tale of sexual identity, orientation and Orlando-like transformation. It is described by Charles Foran in the Montreal Gazette as a ' ...

superb psychological acute observation on love, attraction and belonging ...' In 2002 Yann Martel came to public attention when he won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction for his second novel, Life of Pi (2002), an epic survival story with an overarching religious theme. The novel tells the story of one Pi Patel, the son of an Indian family of zookeepers. They decide to emigrate to Canada and embark on a ship with their animals to cross the Pacific. They are shipwrecked and Pi is left bobbing in a lifeboat in the company of a zebra, a hyena, an orang-utan and a 450-pound Bengal tiger. Life of Pi will eventually be published in over forty countries and territories, representing well over thirty languages, and a film of the book, adapted by Ang Lee, was released in 2012. In 2004, a collection of short stories was published entitled We Ate The Children Last.

His latest books are the novel Beatrice and Virgil (2010), a New York Time Bestseller and winner of the Financial Times Fiction of Year Award; 101 Letters to a Prime Minister (2012), a collection of letters to the prime minister of Canada; and his latest novel The High Mountains of Portugal (2016). Yann Martel lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Author statement Critical perspective Having failed to create much of a literary splash with his first two books, Yann Martel became a bestselling author with the Man Booker Prize for Fiction winning Life of Pi (2002). He turned to writing after doing a variety of different jobs, from washing dishes to planting trees. Initially, Martel wanted to be a politician; he also considered anthropology. Then, after a long period of travel he began writing plays and short stories; by the time he was 27, he was earning his living as a writer. The opening of Life of Pi, with its quirky allegorical feel, is pleasing in its gentle and warm-hearted tone.

Prefaced with a part fact-part fiction note on how he came upon the story, Martel’s fantastical tale of a 16-year-old-boy’s 227-day odyssey adrift in the Pacific, accompanied by a spotted hyena, a zebra with a broken leg, a female orangutan and a 450lb Royal Bengal Tiger, is dripping in religious lore, zoological history and metaphysical speculation. It is also a spirited and unexpected defence of zoos. Essentially a hybrid of an adventure story and a fable about belief, Life of Pi is narrated by Piscine Monitor Patel, named after a family friend’s favourite French swimming pool. Piscine grows up in Pondicherry in India, the son of a zookeeper. Bored of jokes at the expense of his name he restyles himself Pi and in that ‘elusive, irrational number with which scientists try to understand the universe [he finds] refuge.’ Although born a Hindu, Pi is fascinated by other religions and attracts them ‘the way a dog attracts fleas.’ He becomes both a Christian and a Muslim and finds humanity and a sense of mystical solidity in his faiths. Pi’s sense of religious wonder is revelatory.

It invests belief with a sense of the magical, something which has been lost in the secular West which views religion with increasing suspicion or even contempt. His family, although confused by Pi’s attachment to three distinct religions, nevertheless do not place any restriction upon him practising them. However, when Pi’s family decides to emigrate to Canada, taking a menagerie of animals with them, all is set to change. But when their Japanese cargo ship meets with disaster on the Pacific, only Pi and a group of animals survive. Soon, given the carnivorous nature of the curiously named tiger Richard Parker, only he and Pi remain. Pi’s encyclopaedic knowledge of the animal world, his respect for his own fear and his refusal to surrender to his fate, all allow him to survive on the boat with Richard Parker for many months. In meticulous detail, Pi describes his life on a small lifeboat. In long hallucinatory passages he retells the story of the shipwreck. When they finally reach the coast of Mexico, Richard Parker flees and is never seen again. Rescued by the authorities, Pi soon meets with representatives of the Japanese Government who want to know what happened to their ship. He tells them two stories.

The one we know, and another much more conventional version. The reader is left to muse upon which version might be the truth; there is of course the possibility that the story we have been told is nothing more than a fantasy elaborated by Pi as a coping strategy. Marquez’s Story of a Castaway rewritten by Salman Rushdie on hallucinogenic drugs, Life of Pi is an exhilarating tale of faith and survival. It is enchanting, a fiction that sets itself up as truth in such a convincing manner that at the novel’s conclusion, the reader cannot be entirely sure that the events depicted did not in fact take place. Martel’s first book, The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios and Other Stories (1993), was well-received critically, but failed to sell. The four stories in the collection, all extremely moving meditations on such issues as grief, the extremities of war, pain, death and illness, are full of fresh and exuberant writing and formal experimentation. The book has, like The Life of Pi the feel of the fantastical, there is the touch of an Italio Calvino, a sense of boundary pushing.

In ‘Manners of Dying,’ variations of a warden's letter to the mother of a son he has just hanged, are presented as if they were an etiquette manual. In the title story, the tale of a young man dying of AIDS who, along with a friend, tells the history of the Roccamatio family of Helsinki, melds into the insanity of 20th century history. ‘The Mirror Machine’ is about a young man who comes across a strange antique in his grandmother's attic. His fascination with this object draws the reader into reflecting upon the power our possessions exert over us, the memories they hold, the life-force they seem to possess. The marvellously titled ‘The Time I Heard the Private Donald J. Rankin String Concerto with One Discordant Violin, by the American composer John Morton,’ presents the Vietnam War through the auditory prism of music. It is a dazzlingly original means of exploring subject matter that has been dealt with exhaustively, both in film and literature. Self (1996), Martel’s second book and his first novel, was neither critically nor commercially well received and is now, of course, very much in the shadow of The Life of Pi.

Yet to dismiss Martel’s skewed work of fantasy-autobiography is to do the book a disservice. Ostensibly about an 18-year-old boy, who, in the course of an overnight Kafkaesque transformation, becomes a woman, only to morph back into masculine form in his mid-20s, Self is an acute study of sexual orientation and identity. Bold, original and in parts very funny, the novel is the story of a nameless narrator who struggles to grasp the implication that he/she is ‘a ceaseless monologue trapped within [him/herself.]’ Self concerns itself with the tension between fixed and mutable notions of who we are. It is about the limits of our personalities; the possibilities of transformation on a grand scale; the scope of fiction to express our confusions. Self asks how we create ourselves and what it means to do so. The back cover asks: What is fiction? What is autobiography? What is man? What is woman? What is violence? What is happiness? Self is a rumination on the notion of what constitutes a boundary. As parts of the novel are narrated in both French and English Self also deals with what separates languages, and how this informs us.

Martel doesn’t provide the reader with easily digestible answers to these questions; yet in his sensitive, honest and unflinchingly open exploration of these matters, he leaves the reader with much to think about. Part travelogue, part autobiography and part philosophical treatise, Self is a playful although ultimately serious, examination of the loneliness of youth, the melancholic hankering after a greater purpose, and the essential absurdity of longing and sexual desire; it lingers long in the imagination, particularly its horrifyingly violent dénouement. Yann Martel approaches his themes in unusual and provocative ways. He reminds us of the power of the imagination and the need for storytelling. Wherever he goes, we can expect the unexpected. Garan Holcombe, 2004 Lisa Jardine obituary Celebrated historian, academic and author whose stellar career spanned the worlds of science and the arts<p>Lisa Jardine, who has died aged 71 after suffering from cancer, was the leading British female public intellectual of our times.

She could properly be called a polymath, fluent in five languages and, as comfortable with the sciences as she was with the humanities, the breadth of her scholarship and the depth of her understanding of so many subjects was awe-inspiring. But more important to her than her impressive intellectual achievements – her research, her essays, her fascinating books and her stimulating broadcasts – was the opportunity to show the generations of women who came after her that it was both possible to succeed at work and at many other things as well.</p><p>At every stage of her career she made friends whom she kept all her life. She knew and cared about the details of their love affairs, their domestic dramas with their children and all their hopes and fears. She was as good a listener as she was a teacher, and a great encourager.

Teaching was her passion, whether she was lecturing to a distinguished academic audience or helping a student get through a dissertation, and in the process many of her students would say she changed their lives.</p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> Books Lisa Jardine: fearless star of Britain's intellectual firmament <p>Jardine’s energy, humane moral sensibility, groundbreaking books, humour and capacity for friendship marked her out as an extraordinary presence</p><p>John and Lisa were in the front, John at the wheel; the rest of us, the kids, were in the back as we set off for the Channel tunnel.

David Baddiel, <a href="">Salley Vickers</a>, <a href="">Russell Celyn Jones</a> and I, the judges of the Man Booker prize 2002 and the luckiest group of literary arbiters there had ever been or will be: because <a href="">Professor Lisa Jardine</a> had been our chair.<br></p><p>Not too many people had heard of Yann Martel, nor <a href="">Life of Pi</a>, when he and his novel appeared on the shortlist and then took the prize, but the book has since gone on to be one of the bestselling winners in the Booker’s history. Our discussions were fruitful and fascinating, our arguments direct, but always courteous. That, perhaps, was to be expected; but we didn’t just choose a winner.

Lisa made us friends for life.</p><p> <span>Related: </span><a href="">Renowned historian Lisa Jardine dies aged 71</a> </p><p> <span>Related: </span><a href="">Sign up to our Bookmarks newsletter</a> </p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> Books Ang Lee casts unknown teenage actor in Life of Pi Suraj Sharma, a 17-year-old student from Delhi, wins lead role in film adaptation of Yann Martel's novel<p>A previously unknown Indian actor has <a href="" title="">won the lead role</a> in <a href="" title="">Ang Lee's forthcoming big screen adaptation</a> of the bestselling novel Life of Pi, by <a href="" title="">Yann Martel</a>, reports Variety.</p><p><a href="" title="">Suraj Sharma</a>, a 17-year-old student from Delhi, beat more than 3,000 other challengers for the role following a month-long search. He will start work in January, when Lee plans to start principal photography in Taiwan and India.

David Magee (Finding Neverland) has penned the screenplay.</p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> Ang Lee Ang Lee could set sail on Life of Pi Oscar-winning director of Brokeback Mountain is in talks to direct an adaptation of Yann Martel's acclaimed novel<p>He's done the big-budget, martial-arts costume drama, the gay cowboy romance and the superhero blockbuster. Now Ang Lee looks set to take on what could be his greatest challenge so far: <a href="" title="">Variety reports</a> he is in talks to bring Yann Martel's Life of Pi to the big screen.</p><p>The 2002 Booker prize-winning novel chronicles the travails of a shipwrecked teenage boy stuck on a life raft with only a female orangutan, injured zebra, hungry hyena and brooding Bengal tiger for company.</p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> Yann Martel Yann Martel on winning the Booker prize As the Booker prize season gets underway Yann Martel, last year's winner, describes the impact of the award on his writing life<p>My life as a writer was a quiet thing.

The rumination over words, the occasional muttering out loud of a sentence to see if it sounded right, the paragraphs that accumulated as discreetly as money in a Swiss bank account, the new ideas that exploded soundlessly in my head, the hours and months of work that went by in solitude, interrupted only by the ringing of the phone or my stomach grumbling - it was all about as noisy as water bubbling away on a stovetop. </p><p>Then came the Man Booker Prize 2002. </p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> Yann Martel Word wise web Today online animation will give book advertising a new lease of life by reaching a whole new audience. Kate Watson-Smyth finds out how the Booker prize-winning Life of Pi was put to film<p>Advertising may be getting more sophisticated all the time, but the rarefied world of publishing is one area which has remained doggedly unchanged by advancing technology. Book sales have traditionally relied on word of mouth and the odd poster campaign or newspaper review, but today sees the start of a new genre in literary advertising - the animated trailer.

</p><p>The Life of Pi, winner of this year's Booker prize, is one of four books that have been selected as the inspiration for a series of five-minute animation sequences which can only be accessed online and which, its creators hope, will take book-buying to a whole new audience. Peter Collingridge, of the Edinburgh-based company Screenbase, which produced the films, says he was driven by a desire to reach a wider audience which was web-literate but who were not traditional book buyers. "Book advertising tends to be creatively lacking and we want to bring a more global approach to it, in the way that brands like Levi's and PlayStation approach their marketing," he says. </p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> Technology Booker winner in plagiarism row Author admits idea came from Brazilian novel<p>In the Life of Pi, Martel, 39, tells the story of a shipwrecked Indian teenager who ends up in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger after the ship taking him and his family to Canada sinks.

</p><p>It is this similarity to a story by one of Brazil's most respected authors, Moacyr Scliar, which has started the row over how much of the idea Martel "borrowed" from Scliar's Max and the Cats, in which a teenage Jewish boy is adrift in a boat with a panther after a shipwreck. </p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> Yann Martel Posh and books No one is ambivalent about Jamie Byng; they either love him or loathe him. Not that he gives a damn - since scooping the Booker prize last week, he's been hailed as the most dynamic figure in British publishing. He talks to Libby Brookes about his kids, cocaine and Canongate<p>When people say bad things about Jamie Byng - the second son of the 8th Earl of Strafford, youthful director of the Edinburgh-based independent publishers Canongate, and lately responsible for this year's Man Booker prize winner The Life of Pi - they don't hold back. He is variously described as unbearably boastful, a posh huckster, a nuisance and a trustafarian who takes too much cocaine.

When people say good things about Byng, they are equally unfettered. He's a charismatic idealist, imaginative and hugely talented, with a sharp business sense. He has boundless energy, a passion for good writing and a commitment to his authors that is rare in contemporary publishing. </p><p>And often it is the same people saying these things - folk are curiously ambiguous about Byng. He, on the other hand, is not ambiguous about much. </p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> Books Luke Harding visits the inspiration for Life of Pi Yann Martel found inspiration for his Booker prize winning book Life of Pi at Trivandrum Zoo in south India. No wonder it sparked his imagination, says Luke Harding; it is a place of wonder and delight<p>Few zoos can boast of having earned themselves a small place in literary history. But Trivandrum Zoo - one of India's oldest - provided much of the inspiration behind Yann Martel's extraordinary novel Life of Pi, which won the Booker prize last week.

The story of a 16-year-old boy who finds himself adrift on a lifeboat in the Pacific with a hyena, an orang-utan, a zebra, and a tiger is by now well known. </p><p>But the 39-year-old Canadian author was quick to point out, after scooping the £50,000 prize, that his novel was not "exotic". His compelling descriptions of quirky animal behaviour are based on genuine research. He spent a lot of time at Trivandrum Zoo, he said. </p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> Yann Martel The Booker revolution Was Lisa Jardine's very British coup good for the Booker? <a href="">Have your say</a><p>So, in the end, as predicted by The Observer, the Man Booker Prize did not go to the most distinguished writer on the short-list, William Trevor, for his wonderful short novel, The Story of Lucy Gault. That was too obvious. Nor did it go to my personal favourite, Rohinton Mistry's Family Matters, the classically most accomplished narrative.

In 2002, that proved somehow unsustainable.</p><p>Nor, finally, did it go to flavour of the month Sarah Waters's 'lesbo Victorian romp' (her description, not mine). In the final furlong, the stewards of our great annual literary steeplechase, the punter's nightmare, decided that Fingersmith was too much like a genre novel to deserve the supreme accolade. A genre novel has never won this prize.</p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> Books Magical realist triumphs - but behind the scenes it's the same old story £50,000 Man Booker Prize goes to Canadian author for tale of a boy adrift on a lifeboat with a hyena, an orang-utan, a zebra and a tiger<p>The 39-year-old, who was born in Spain and lives in Montreal, charmed the judges with his magical realist tale of a boy who survives adrift on a lifeboat in the Pacific with a hyena, an orang-utan, a zebra with a broken leg and a bad-tempered Bengal tiger called Richard Parker.

Ironically, after the furore that followed Booker judge David Baddiel's rant against dull and weighty tomes, the book is probably the most quirky and populist to have won the prize since Roddy Doyle's Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha in 1993. </p><p>But the decision, after 70 minutes of "heated debate", was not unanimous, with Martel emerging as winner on a four-to-one vote apparently over Rohinton Mistry's Bombay saga, Family Matters. Lisa Jardine, the chairwoman of the judges, insisted the website fiasco had been an honest error, even though it prompted William Hill to close its books on the contest after Martel became the unlikely evens favourite with the veteran Irish writer William Trevor. </p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> UK news Portrait: Booker prize winner Yann Martel Yann Martel's first two books sank without trace. But last night he won the Booker Prize with his story about a boy and a tiger stranded on a lifeboat. Aida Edemariam meets him<p>Yann Martel says he doesn't like exoticism in fiction and finds weirdness fatiguing.

Which is pretty weird, given that he has just won the Booker Prize with a story about a Hindu Christian Muslim boy who spends nearly a year on a lifeboat in the Pacific with a Bengal tiger. Yet his attitude is probably the reason why his novel Life of Pi - a playful and thought-provoking amalgam of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Old Man and the Sea and The Jungle Book - works so well. </p><p>"My narrator isn't weird," insists Martel, "he's an ordinary boy, simple and approachable. I like normality that suffers trial." And anyway, if you spend long enough with someone, exoticism wears off. "Everyone's the same, but they express their sameness in different ways." </p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> Yann Martel Life of Pi: Review Zany and engaging breakthrough novel<p>The story is engaging and the characters attractively zany. Piscine Molitor Patel (named after a family friend's favourite French swimming pool) grows up in Pondicherry, a French-speaking part of India, where his father runs the local zoo.

Pi, Hindu-born, has a talent for faith and sees nothing wrong with being converted both to Islam and to Christianity. Pi and his brother understand animals intimately, but their father impresses on them the dangers of anthropomorphism: invade an animal's territory, and you will quickly find that nearly every creature is dangerous. </p><p>Both his faith and his understanding of animals are soon tested to the limit. His family decides to emigrate to Canada; North American zoos pay well, and so they take many animals with them. Unfortunately their ship sinks. </p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> UK news Russell Celyn Jones: Read between the hype My role as a Booker judge was to give literary writing a boost, not to help marketing departments sell 'niche' fiction<p>There has been greater transparency surrounding the 2002 Booker prize panel than in any other year. The judges' meetings that have always been held in camera will be shown on camera tonight.

The five of us have been accredited with breaking with traditions and ushering in a new era after it was reported that we complained about having to read too many "heavy tomes" with "obvious gravitas" designed to seduce Booker judges, as though there is such a thing as a Booker genre. </p><p>And then there was a lament attached to us about a lack of "populist" books submitted. When one judge makes a comment to the press it is assumed his views are general to all. It is true that the five of us are unusually harmonious, but this does not mean we share the same tastes, and those two statements need some clarification.

</p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> Booker prize 2002 Bring on the new Lisa Jardine has shaped the transformation of Old Booker into New Man Booker - and a good thing too, says Robert McCrum<br />Have your say on the <a href="">Guardian talkboards</a><p>In the roller-coaster history of the Booker prize, there have been many defining moments: John Berger in 1972 dedicating his prize-money to the Black Panthers; Anthony Burgess in 1980 refusing to pander to the television and wear black tie; James Kelman in 1994 denouncing English linguistic imperialism; John Coetzee in 1999 winning for an unprecedented second time.</p><p>This year the defining moment possibly occurred when the entire Booker jury (David Baddiel, Russell Celyn Jones, Salley Vickers and Erica Wagner) led by their indefatigable chairperson Lisa Jardine took an impromptu ride on the London Eye.</p> <a href="">Continue reading...</a> Books Booker prize 2002 | Books | The Guardian Booker prize 2002 Suraj Sharma, a 17-year-old student

 from Delhi, wins lead role in film adaptation of Yann Martel's novel Published: 26 Oct 2010 The author is up for his fifth Booker Prize shortlist at the age of 81.

Will he finally be given the recognition he deserves? Published: 1 Aug 2009 Oscar-winning director of Brokeback Mountain is in talks to direct an adaptation of Yann Martel's acclaimed novel Published: 18 Feb 2009 As the Booker prize season gets underway Yann Martel, last year's winner, describes the impact of the award on his writing life Published: 6 Sep 2003 Today online animation will give book advertising a new lease of life by reaching a whole new audience. Kate Watson-Smyth finds out how the Booker prize-winning Life of Pi was put to film. Published: 18 Nov 2002 Yann Martel, the Canadian author and winner of this year's Booker prize has become entangled in a row over the plagiarism of fictional ideas after freely admitting the inspiration for his prize-winning novel came from another writer's work. Published: 8 Nov 2002 Posh and books No one is ambivalent about Jamie Byng; they either love him or loathe him. Not that he gives a damn - since scooping the Booker prize last week, he's been hailed as the most dynamic figure in British publishing.

He talks to Libby Brookes about his kids, cocaine and Canongate. Published: 31 Oct 2002 Yann Martel found inspiration for his Booker prize winning book at a Zoo in south India. No wonder it sparked his imagination, says Luke Harding; it is a place of wonder and delight. Published: 29 Oct 2002 Lisa Jardine's genius for public relations has transformed the Booker Prize, says Robert McCrum Published: 26 Oct 2002 The winnner of the 2002 Man Booker prize was today also awarded the "people's" version of the award. Published: 25 Oct 2002 The Story of Lucy Gault is a tour de force from William Trevor and a worthy Booker favourite Published: 29 Sep 2002 I want to tell you a story Robert McCrum Don't knock the Booker Prize. It's brought back the narrative novel and there's nothing wrong with that, says Robert McCrum. Published: 28 Sep 2002 Us? Boring? Ha!

Aida Edemariam Aida Edemariam: Just when they thought it was safe to ignore Canadians, three of us turn up on the Booker shortlist. Published: 26 Sep 2002 Her new novel is on the Booker shortlist and an adaptation of her first is on TV next month. How come lesbo-Victorian romps are suddenly so popular? Sarah Waters tells all to Stephen Moss. Published: 25 Sep 2002 With a TV adaptation set to bring her cult debut novel to an even wider audience, and a follow-up out next month, Zadie Smith seems destined for stardom, says Sean O'Hagan. But she's got other ideas. Published: 25 Aug 2002 Fingersmith by Sarah Waters My name, in those days, was Susan Trinder. People called me Sue. I know the year I was born in, but for many years I did not know the date, and took my birthday at Christmas. I believe I am an orphan. My mother I know is dead. But I never saw her, she was nothing to me.

I was Mrs Sucksby's child, if I was anyone's; and for father I had Mr Ibbs, who kept the locksmith's shop, at Lant Street, in the Borough, near to the Thames. Published: 22 May 2002 Amazon.com: Life of Pi (Man Booker Prize) (9780151008117): Yann Martel: Books Editorial Reviews Amazon.com Review Yann Martel's imaginative and unforgettable Life of Pi is a magical reading experience, an endless blue expanse of storytelling about adventure, survival, and ultimately, faith. The precocious son of a zookeeper, 16-year-old Pi Patel is raised in Pondicherry, India, where he tries on various faiths for size, attracting "religions the way a dog attracts fleas." Planning a move to Canada, his father packs up the family and their menagerie and they hitch a ride on an enormous freighter.

After a harrowing shipwreck, Pi finds himself adrift in the Pacific Ocean, trapped on a 26-foot lifeboat with a wounded zebra, a spotted hyena, a seasick orangutan, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker ("His head was the size and color of the lifebuoy, with teeth"). It sounds like a colorful setup, but these wild beasts don't burst into song as if co-starring in an anthropomorphized Disney feature. After much gore and infighting, Pi and Richard Parker remain the boat's sole passengers, drifting for 227 days through shark-infested waters while fighting hunger, the elements, and an overactive imagination. In rich, hallucinatory passages, Pi recounts the harrowing journey as the days blur together, elegantly cataloging the endless passage of time and his struggles to survive: "It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I've made none the champion." An award winner in Canada, Life of Pi, Yann Martel's second novel, should prove to be a breakout book in the U.S.

At one point in his journey, Pi recounts, "My greatest wish--other than salvation--was to have a book. A long book with a never-ending story. One that I could read again and again, with new eyes and fresh understanding each time." It's safe to say that the fabulous, fablelike Life of Pi is such a book. --Brad Thomas Parsons Canadian Writer Wins A Revamped Booker Prize - The New York Times The New York Times World |Canadian Writer Wins A Revamped Booker Prize Search Continue reading the main story Yann Martel, a Canadian writer, won the newly renamed Man Booker Prize tonight for his novel ''Life of Pi,'' the magical fable of a young man shipwrecked in the company of a Bengal tiger. It was the first presentation of Britain's premier literary award since it was taken over this year by new sponsors, the Man Group, an investment house that caters mainly to high-rolling wealthy clients. The group more than doubled the purse to $75,000 from $30,000 and fostered a shift away from what was called ''pompous, portentous and pretentious fiction.'' Organizers said that Mr.

Martel won only narrowly over an unidentified runner-up with judges finally voting 4-1 in his favor. The prize administrator, Martyn Goff, described the debate among the judges as ''strong and good but never unpleasant.'' ''It was a close-run thing with another book,'' Mr Goff said but declined to identify the second contestant. Advertisement Continue reading the main story The prize was announced in the renovated Great Court at the British Museum. The award, Britain's equivalent to the Pulitzer or the National Book Awards, has recently generated publicity through suggestions that it might be open to American writers from 2004. Currently it is restricted to writers from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth. Six finalists emerged after judges read 130 entries, shedding some hot favorites, including William Boyd and Zadie Smith, to draw up the shortlist. Last month, the judges announced what their chairwoman, Lisa Jardine, called ''the beginning of a new era'' in which they would seek winners for the prize among more popular forms of writing. The pledge seemed part of an effort to change the clubby and opaque atmosphere surrounding the prize. Recorded excerpts of the judges discussing the shortlisted writers were shown for the first time tonight during a televised presentation.

''Out have gone the smoke-filled rooms, the fixing and the fudging,'' wrote Robert McCrum, literary editor of the Sunday newspaper The Observer. ''In have come the TV cameras. Old Booker used to deliberate at length in posh restaurants. New Man-Booker is inclined to order take-out pizza.'' Presenting the award, Ms. Jardine said the fiction competing for the prize represented ''a golden age for British and Commonwealth fiction'' that displayed ''fine writing and virtuoso plotting.'' She said the five judges had been looking for ''quality that readers like us would delight in reading.'' ''Life of Pi,'' the winning book, is the story of a 16-year-old Indian boy, Piscine -- or Pi -- Patel, who has grown up in his father's zoo and is shipwrecked with a Bengal tiger and other animals as the zoo is moving to Canada. Pi, a young man who has adopted Hinduism, Islam and Christianity, is the sole human survivor. Mr.

Martel said he wanted to ''push the limits of the believable until you are forced to make a leap of faith.'' In a review in the Guardian newspaper, Justine Jordan called the plot ''a vertiginously tall tale'' that is read ''not so much as an allegory or magical-realist fable, but as an edge-of-seat adventure.'' Advertisement Continue reading the main story ''Martel writes with such convincing immediacy, seasoning his narrative with zoological verisimilitude and survival tips about turtle-fishing, solar stills and keeping occupied, that disbelief is suspended, like Pi, above the terrible depths of the Pacific ocean,'' Ms. Jordan said. As he received the prize, Mr. Martel, who spoke in English and in French, praised the other shortlisted works and said his had been the ''luckiest.'' The shortlist included two other Canadians, Rohinton Mistry and Carol Shields, along with Irish writer William Trevor, Britain's Sarah Waters and Australia's Tim Winton. Mr.

Martel, 39, who was born in Spain of a Canadian diplomatic family and now lives in Montreal, had already figured in the run-up to the prize when the organizers mistakenly named him as the winner during a trial of the prize's Web site last week. 'Life of Pi' author Yann Martel: Why I've sent 91 books to Canada's PM - CNN.com 'Life of Pi' author Yann Martel: Why I've sent 91 books to Canada's PM By Susannah Palk for CNN Canadian author Yann Martel after winning the Booker for "Life of Pi" in 2002. STORY HIGHLIGHTS Yann Martel won the Booker Prize in 2002 for his novel "Life of Pi" The son of Canadian diplomats, he says Canada's values of tolerance and openness have informed his work Since 2007 Martel has been sending Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper books on a regular basis "If we have leaders who don't read books, we are lead by the blind," he says Canada is one of the countries we're featuring on Global Connections , a segment on CNN's Connect the World that takes two very different countries and asks you to find the connections.

We asked novelist Yann Martel to tell us how Canada has shaped his life and work. (CNN) -- The Booker Prize-winning author of "Life of Pi," Yann Martel is one of Canada's most recognized and outspoken writers. Born in Spain to Canadian diplomats, Martel lived a nomadic life as a youngster, growing up in various countries including Costa Rica, France, Mexico and his home country of Canada. The author of six books, including the recently released "Beatrice and Virgil," Martel came to prominence after his best-selling novel "Life of Pi" won the Booker, Britain's top literary prize, in 2002. Three years ago Martel began sending one novel to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper every two weeks as part of a book-sharing project he calls "What is Stephen Harper Reading?" Now up to novel number 91, Martel tells CNN why he started the project and explains how his country's values of tolerance and openness have informed his work and his life. If I'm so strongly egalitarian, it's because I'm Canadian. If I'm so tolerant of diversity of every kind, it's because I'm Canadian. --Author Yann Martel Stephen Harper CNN: What does Canada mean to you?

Yann Martel: It means a place where I can be at home while still sometimes feeling I'm abroad. Canada has two official languages and two founding colonial cultures, but nothing else official. In that, to be Canadian is a state of mind. He or she is Canadian who says they are (the passport helps to make it real). A Canadian can be from any part of the world, speak any native tongue, be of any skin color, practice any religion (or none at all), practice any culture. That dizzying variety is breathtaking and constantly refreshing. CNN: Has the country inspired and/or informed your work? YM: Yes, by making me open to stories that come from anywhere and are set anywhere. Canada is very tolerant of diverse voices. I remember when I won the Booker Prize in 2002, half the shortlist of six was Canadian. I was joined on the list by Rohinton Mistry and Carol Shields. English critics sniffed that we weren't really Canadian since none of us had been born in Canada (Mistry was born in India, Shields in the US and I in Spain). They got it diametrically wrong.

It's on the contrary typically Canadian that we were born abroad and, in the case of my novel and Mistry's, that they were set abroad. CNN: Would you say Canada has influenced your personality? If so, how? YM: Absolutely. If I'm so strongly egalitarian, it's because I'm Canadian. If I'm so tolerant of diversity of every kind, it's because I'm Canadian. It's interesting to note how this country, with so many immigrant groups, has never produced a right-wing xenophobic political party. CNN: Where is your favorite place to go in Canada? YM: Too many to list, but off the top of my head a National Park like Prince Albert in winter so I can go cross-country skiing. CNN: What do you miss most about Canada when you are away? YM: The decency of the people, the tolerance, the lack of corruption. CNN: What was your motivation for setting up the "What is Stephen Harper Reading" project? YM: A despair at the chasm between the political class and the artist class. Fundamentally, we are cultural beings, speaking a language, belonging to a people, operating with a belief system. After that, we are economic beings, having this or that job.

But the political class today, typified by Stephen Harper, seems to operate under the delusion that culture is just entertainment, something to pass the time after the day's work is done. And so we get governments that are obsessed with economics and reduce their citizens to their economic utility. It's in rebellion against this that I've been sending the PM a literary book every two weeks, to remind him of what a great novel or play or poem can do. It staggers me that we can have a head of government who hasn't read a novel or play or poem since high school. How can a person claim to be a thinking person if they never read fiction or poetry or plays? Fiction is the greatest tool to analyze the human condition. If we have leaders who don't read books, we are lead by the blind. CNN: Of all the books you have sent the Canadian prime minister, which one would you recommend the most? YM: Silly question. But I'd say the perfect example of what literature can do is summarized by "The Death of Ivan Ilych," by Leo Tolstoy. It's a book that will entertain you, changes how you look at life. All that in less than 100 pages.

Share this on: BookPage > Fiction / Short Stories Yann Martel begins both this set of four early stories (collected here for the first time) and his Man Booker Prize-winning novel, <I>Life of Pi</I>, with an "Author's Note." On both occasions, he reflects with gentle deprecation upon his former self: a lost soul, an academic deadbeat, a writer who can't seem to write his way out of a paper bag. One way or another, this... Life of Pi Life of Pi About the Book Winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize for Fiction Pi Patel is an unusual boy. The son of a zookeeper, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior, a fervent love of stories, and practices not only his native Hinduism, but also Christianity and Islam. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for new homes. The ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Richard Parker, a 450-pound Bengal tiger.

Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to coexist with Richard Parker for 227 days lost at sea. When they finally reach the coast of Mexico, Richard Parker flees to the jungle, never to be seen again. The Japanese authorities who interrogate Pi refuse to believe his story and press him to tell them "the truth." After hours of coercion, Pi tells a second story, a story much less fantastical, much more conventional-but is it more true? Life of Pi is at once a realistic, rousing adventure and a meta-tale of survival that explores the redemptive power of storytelling and the transformative nature of fiction. It's a story, as one character puts it, to make you believe in God. Subjects About the Author Yann Martel Yann Martel was born in Spain in 1963 of Canadian parents. Life of Pi won the 2002 Man Booker Prize and has been translated into more than forty languages. A #1 New York Times bestseller, it spent 104 weeks on the list and was adapted to the screen by Ang Lee.

He is also the author of the novels Beatrice and Virgil and Self, the collection of stories The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, and a collection of letters to the prime minister of Canada, 101 Letters to a Prime Minister. He lives in Saskatchewan, Canada. Excerpts CHAPTER 1 My suffering left me sad and gloomy. Academic study and the steady, mindful practice of religion slowly brought me back to life. I have remained a faithful Hindu, Christian and Muslim. I decided to stay in Toronto. After one year of high school, I attended the University of Toronto and took a double-major Bachelor's degree. My majors were religious studies and zoology. My fourth-year thesis for religious studies concerned certain aspects of the cosmogony theory of Isaac Luria, the great sixteenth-century Kabbalist from Safed. My zoology thesis was a functional analysis of the thyroid gland of the three-toed sloth. I chose the sloth because its demeanour-calm, quiet and introspective-did something to soothe my shattered self.

There are two-toed sloths and there are three-toed sloths, the case being determined by the forepaws of the animals, since all sloths have three claws on their hind paws. I had the great luck one summer of studying the three-toed sloth in situ in the equatorial jungles of Brazil. It is a highly intriguing creature. Its only real habit is indolence. It sleeps or rests on average twenty hours a day. Our team tested the sleep habits of five wild three-toed sloths by placing on their heads, in the early evening after they had fallen asleep, bright red plastic dishes filled with water. We found them still in place late the next morning, the water of the dishes swarming with insects. The sloth is at its busiest at sunset, using the word busy here in a most relaxed sense. It moves along the bough of a tree in its characteristic upside-down position at the speed of roughly 400 metres an hour. On the ground, it crawls to its next tree at the rate of 250 metres an hour, when motivated, which is 440 times slower than a motivated cheetah.

Unmotivated, it covers four to five metres in an hour. The three-toed sloth is not well informed about the outside world. On a scale of 2 to 10, where 2 represents unusual dullness and 10 extreme acuity, Beebe (1926) gave the sloth's senses of taste, touch, sight and hearing a rating of 2, and its sense of smell a rating of 3. If you come upon a sleeping three-toed sloth in the wild, two or three nudges should suffice to awaken it; it will then look sleepily in every direction but yours. Why it should look about is uncertain since the sloth sees everything in a Magoo-like blur. As for hearing, the sloth is not so much deaf as uninterested in sound. Beebe reported that firing guns next to sleeping or feeding sloths elicited little reaction. And the sloth's slightly better sense of smell should not be overestimated. They are said to be able to sniff and avoid decayed branches, but Bullock (1968) reported that sloths fall to the ground clinging to decayed branches "often". How does it survive, you might ask.

Precisely by being so slow. Sleepiness and slothfulness keep it out of harm's way, away from the notice of jaguars, ocelots, harpy eagles and anacondas. A sloth's hairs shelter an algae that is brown during the dry season and green during the wet season, so the animal blends in with the surrounding moss and foliage and looks like a nest of white ants or of squirrels, or like nothing at all but part of a tree. The three-toed sloth lives a peaceful, vegetarian life in perfect harmony with its environment. "A good-natured smile is forever on its lips," reported Tirler (1966). I have seen that smile with my own eyes. I am not one given to projecting human traits and emotions onto animals, but many a time during that month in Brazil, looking up at sloths in repose, I felt I was in the presence of upside-down yogis deep in meditation or hermits deep in prayer, wise beings whose intense imaginative lives were beyond the reach of my scientific probing. Sometimes I got my majors mixed up.

A number of my fellow religious-studies students-muddled agnostics who didn't know which way was up, in the thrall of reason, that fool's gold for the bright-reminded me of the three-toed sloth; and the three-toed sloth, such a beautiful example of the miracle of life, reminded me of God. I never had problems with my fellow scientists. Scientists are a friendly, atheistic, hard-working, beer-drinking lot whose minds are preoccupied with sex, chess and baseball when they are not preoccupied with science. I was a very good student, if I may say so myself. I was tops at St. Michael's College four years in a row. I got every possible student award from the Department of Zoology. If I got none from the Department of Religious Studies, it is simply because there are no student awards in this department (the rewards of religious study are not in mortal hands, we all know that). I would have received the Governor General's Academic Medal, the University of Toronto's highest undergraduate award, of which no small number of illustrious Canadians have been recipients, were it not for a beef-eating pink boy with a neck like a tree trunk and a temperament of unbearable good cheer.

I still smart a little at the slight. When you've suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling. My life is like a memento mori painting from European art: there is always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition. I mock this skull. I look at it and I say, "You've got the wrong fellow. You may not believe in life, but I don't believe in death. Move on!" The skull snickers and moves ever closer, but that doesn't surprise me. The reason death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity-it's envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud. The pink boy also got the nod from the Rhodes Scholarship committee. I love him and I hope his time at Oxford was a rich experience.

If Lakshmi, goddess of wealth, one day favours me bountifully, Oxford is fifth on the list of cities I would like to visit before I pass on, after Mecca, Varanasi, Jerusalem and Paris. I have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he's not careful. I love Canada. I miss the heat of India, the food, the house lizards on the walls, the musicals on the silver screen, the cows wandering the streets, the crows cawing, even the talk of cricket matches, but I love Canada. It is a great country much too cold for good sense, inhabited by compassionate, intelligent people with bad hairdos. Anyway, I have nothing to go home to in Pondicherry. Richard Parker has stayed with me. I've never forgotten him. Dare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with love. Such is the strangeness of the human heart.

I still cannot understand how he could abandon me so unceremoniously, without any sort of goodbye, without looking back even once. That pain is like an axe that chops at my heart. The doctors and nurses at the hospital in Mexico were incredibly kind to me. And the patients, too. Victims of cancer or car accidents, once they heard my story, they hobbled and wheeled over to see me, they and their families, though none of them spoke English and I spoke no Spanish. They smiled at me, shook my hand, patted me on the head, left gifts of food and clothing on my bed. They moved me to uncontrollable fits of laughing and crying. Within a couple of days I could stand, even make two, three steps, despite nausea, dizziness and general weakness. Blood tests revealed that I was anemic, and that my level of sodium was very high and my potassium low. My body retained fluids and my legs swelled up tremendously. I looked as if I had been grafted with a pair of elephant legs. M...

Reviews Winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize for Fiction "Let me tell you a secret: the name of the greatest living writer of the generation born in the sixties is Yann Martel."--L'Humanité "A story to make you believe in the soul-sustaining power of fiction and its human creators, and in the original power of storytellers like Martel." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review “If this century produces a classic work of survival literature, Martel is surely a contender.’--The Nation "Beautifully fantastical and spirited." -- Salon "Martel displays the clever voice and tremendous storytelling skills of an emerging master." --Publishers Weekly "[Life of Pi] could renew your faith in the ability of novelists to invest even the most outrageous scenario with plausible life." -- The New York Times Book Review "Audacious, exhilarating . . . wonderful. The book's middle section might be the most gripping 200 pages in recent Canadian fiction. It also stands up against some of Martel's more obvious influences: Edgar Allen Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, the novels of H. G.

Wells, certain stretches of Moby Dick."--Quill & Quire You May Also Enjoy Changing people's lives by fostering passionate, curious learners. HMH CORPORATE

Question: YM. ‘Life of Pi’ won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2002. Who is the author?
Answer: YANN MARTEL