We are pleased to announced that Yann Martel's eagerly awaited new novel, Beatrice and 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 and Virgil with readers here in Canada and abroad." |
About
the Author
Yann Martel was born in Spain in 1963 of peripatetic
Canadian parents. He grew up in Alaska, British Columbia,
Costa Rica, France, Ontario and Mexico, and has continued
travelling as an adult, spending time in Iran, Turkey
and India. After studying philosophy at Trent University
and while doing various odd jobs — tree planting,
dishwashing, working as a security guard — he began
to write. He is the prize-winning author of The
Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, a collection
of short stories, and of Self, a novel, both
of them published internationally. He has been living
from his writing since the age of 27. He divides his
time between yoga, writing and volunteering in a
palliative care unit. Yann Martel lives in Montreal.
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Books by
this author
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, 2004)
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
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
Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios: "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
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
Self: "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
Self: "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
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: "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
Life
of Pi: "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
Life
of Pi: "[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: "[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
Life
of Pi: "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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