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 tree-planting camp in northern Ontario, security guard at the Canadian embassy in Paris; and travelled through Mexico, South America, Iran, Turkey, and India. He started writing while he was at university, writing plays and short stories that were, by his own admission, "blighted by immaturity and dreadful", but kept at it. Martel moved to Saskatoon, Canada, with his partner, the writer Alice Kuipers, in 2003. Martel's work first appeared in print in 1988 in "The Malahat Review" with his short story "Mister Ali and the Barrelmaker". The Malahat Review also published in 1990 his short story "The Facts Behind the