Martel, Yann (1963-…), a Canadian author, won the 2002 Man Booker Prize for his novel Life of Pi (2001). The prize, now called the Booker Prize, is the United Kingdom’s best-known literary award. The novel describes the spiritual and physical journey of a young boy crossing the Pacific Ocean in a lifeboat. His only companion is a giant Bengal tiger. Like Martel’s other fiction, Life of Pi has been praised for its originality, skillful storytelling, and brilliant use of language.
Martel gained early recognition for his first book, a collection of short stories called The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios (1993). His first novel, Self (1996), is a fictional autobiography of a young writer and traveler who changes overnight from a male to a female at the age of 18 and, several years later, changes back again at the age of 25. What Is Stephen Harper Reading? (2009) is Martel’s meditation on reading and writing. Beatrice and Virgil (2010) is a novel about a writer who collaborates on a symbolic play about the Holocaust starring a donkey named Beatrice and a monkey named Virgil. The Holocaust was the systematic murder of Jews and others by the Nazis during World War II (1939-1945). The High Mountains of Portugal (2016) consists of three related short novels that take place during three different times during the 1900’s.
Martel was born on June 25, 1963, of Canadian parents in Salamanca, Spain. He studied philosophy at Trent University in Ontario, receiving a B.A. degree in 1985. Martel worked at numerous jobs before becoming a full-time writer at about the age of 28.
