Yann Martel out that he could not have stolen from a work he had not at the time read, and he willingly acknowledged being influenced by the New York Times review of Scliar's work and thanked him in the Author's Note of Life of Pi. "Life of Pi" was later chosen for the 2003 edition of CBC Radio's "Canada Reads" competition, where it was championed by author Nancy Lee. In addition, its French translation, "Histoire de Pi", was included in the French version of the competition, "Le combat des livres", in 2004, championed by singer Louise Forestier. Martel was the Samuel Fischer
Yann Martel University of Saskatchewan. "Beatrice and Virgil", his third novel, came out in 2010. The work is an allegorical take on the Holocaust, attempting to approach this period not through the lens of historical witness, but through imaginative synthesis. The main characters in the story are a writer, a taxidermist, and two stuffed animals: a red howler monkey and a donkey. From 2007 to 2011, Martel ran a guerrilla book club with the then Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, sending the Prime Minister a book every two weeks for four years, a total of more than a hundred novels, plays,