Yann Martel
Author of
Life of Pi
BIOGRAPHY
• Yann Martel was born in Spain in 1963
of peripatetic Canadian parents; he
travelled a great deal internationally
while he was growing up, because his
parents worked for the Canadian
Foreign Service. . His father was a
diplomat as well as a recognized
Quebecois poet. As a result of his
father's job, Martel grew up in Alaska,
British Columbia, Costa Rica, France,
Ontario and Mexico. He has continued
traveling 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.
Biography Continued…
• He is the prize-winning author of The Facts Behind the
Helsinki Roccamatios, a collection of short stories, and
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.
He will be writer in residence in Saskatoon for the fall of
2003.
• Life of Pi started with six months in India visiting
mosques, temples, churches and zoos, before Martel
took a year to read religious texts and castaway stories.
• Martel then got down to writing
- which took another two years.
On Faith
• "Fanatics do not have faith they have belief. With faith you
let go. You trust. Whereas with
belief you cling." Then the
novelist comes through. "One of
the things I discovered, reading
the founding texts of Islam,
Christianity, Hinduism - a good
religion works like a good novel:
it makes you suspend your
disbelief."
Martel during an interview with The
Guardian
Interview With Yann Martel
• Take notes on Martel’s
thoughts on Religious
Extremism, Faith, Fear
and Hope.
• He also speaks of his
novel’s comparison with
“Max and the Cats”.
What are his thoughts
on that?
• http://www.npr.org/templ
ates/story/story.php?stor
yId=878087
Consider…
• Yann Martel said in an interview, “The theme of
this novel can be summarized in three lines. Life
is a story. You can choose your story. And a story
with an imaginative overlay is the better story.”
• What do you think this means?