We are pleased to announced that Yann Martel's eagerly awaited new novel, Beatrice & Virgil, will be on sale in Canada on April 6, 2010, leading off publication around the world. Yann Martel is best-known as the author of the beloved novel, Life of Pi, which won the 2002 Man Booker Prize. Says Yann Martel, "A book is a part of speech, an element in an ongoing dialogue about life. I look forward to talking about Beatrice & Virgil with readers here in Canada and abroad."

About the Author

The award-winning author of four books, the most recent of which is What Is Stephen Harper Reading?, Yann Martel is one of this country's most interesting and surprising writers. Born in Spain in 1963, Yann grew up in various places as the son of diplomats. His parents now live in Montreal, where Yann visits regularly. He won the Journey Prize for the title story in The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios. Life of Pi was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. It was the winner of the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction as well as the Man Booker Prize. Yann lives with writer Alice Kuipers and their son, Theo, in Saskatoon.

Self was published in the New Face of Fiction program in 1996.

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Books by this author

Beatrice & Virgil (Knopf Canada, 2010)
What Is Stephen Harper Reading? (Vintage Canada, 2009)
Life of Pi Illustrated Edition (Knopf Canada, 2007)
Life of Pi Large Print (Vintage Canada 2007)
Life of Pi (Seal Books, 2006)
Life of Pi (Vintage Canada, 2002)
Life of Pi (Knopf Canada, 2001)
Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios (Vintage Canada, 1993)
Self (Vintage Canada, 1997)
Self (Knopf Canada, 1996)

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Literary Awards

• Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2002 (Life of Pi)
• Winner of the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction 2001 (Life of Pi)
• Shortlisted for the 2001 Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction (Life of Pi)
• Shortlisted for Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award (Self)
• Winner of the Journey Prize (Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios)

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Book Reviews and Quotes

Praise for The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios

"Yann Martel's new, strong voice weaves together our smallest anxieties and memories with the sentences and executions passed upon all of us by war, crime, and life… Martel has that rare talent of making fiction true and thus painful yet compelling."
-John Ralston Saul

"Martel's exuberant writing makes reading an intense experience… [He] has the ability to make us feel deeply for his characters even though we may interact with them in an unconventional way… Each story in The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios leads us, through a different path, to the centre of human experience."
-Vancouver Sun

Praise for Self

"This is an exhilarating piece of fiction, as bold and original as anything I've read in a long time… Superb, psychologically acute observations on love, attraction and belonging… An intelligent and entertaining meditation on sexuality, language and identity, the nature of longing, and on the very process of creating things: selves, characters, and novels."
-Charles Foran, Montreal Gazette

"A narrative orchestrated by an outspoken 'I' that is candid, intelligent, likable, life-embracing, protean, chatty, smug, and mischievous… Martel is a bright, amiable, enthusiastic writer with an original, playful mind that he is not afraid to use… I found myself waiting, as I read, for the event, the upset… And when it comes it is both expected and unexpected in the right degrees, and it is truly harrowing, because Martel is a good writer."
-Quill & Quire

"Yann Martel wonderfully represents the child's universe as a seamless whole… A penetrating, funny, original and absolutely delightful exploration… [Martel] is a natural and often brilliant essayist and expositor, with a knack for aphorism and a rich cultural and literary foundation."
-The Globe and Mail

Praise for Life of Pi

"Martel is a writer who'll be difficult to predict. You begin to feel shudders, an anxious loss of footing as the novel flutters wildly down esoteric corridors. We're certainly no longer on firm fictional ground when a modern epic ends up in the middle of the Pacific, its protagonist lost at sea with only a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger for company."
-Noel Rieder, The Gazette (Montreal)

"Life of Pi… is about many things - religion, zoology, fear - but most of all, it's about sheer tenacity. Martel has created a funny, wise and highliy original look at what it means to be human."
-Chatelaine

"A storyteller, in order to enchant, must lie, and then must convince us that he is not lying. This novel is all about storytelling."
-The Globe and Mail

"[M]artel’s writing is so original you might think he wants you to read as if, like a perfect snowflake, no other book had ever had this form… In Pi one gleans that faith - one of the most ephemeral emotions, yet crucial whenever life is one the line - is rooted in the will to live. In any event, when Pi does come to the end of his journey, he has it."
-National Post

"[Life of Pi] has a buoyant, exotic, insistence reminiscent of Edgar Allen Poe's most Gothic fiction… Oddities abound and the storytelling is first-rate. Yann Martel has written a novel full of grisly reality, outlandish plot, inventive setting and thought-provoking questions about the value and purpose of fiction. This novel should float."
-The Edmonton Journal

"A fabulous romp through an imagination by turns ecstatic, cunning, despairing and resilient, this novel is an impressive achievement - "a story that will make you believe in God," as one character says… This richly patterned work, Martel's second novel, won Canada's 2001 Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. In it, Martel displays the clever voice and tremendous storytelling skills of an emerging master. FYI: Booksellers would be wise to advise readers to browse through Martel's introductory note. His captivating honesty about the genesis of his story is almost worth the price of the book itself."
-Publisher's Weekly

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Links to Extra Resources

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