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 Visiting Professor at the Institute of Comparative Literature, Freie Universität Berlin in 2002, where he taught a course titled "The Animal in Literature". He then spent a year in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, from September 2003 as the Saskatoon Public Library's writer-in-residence. He collaborated with Omar Daniel, composer-in-residence at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, on a piece for piano, string quartet and bass. The composition, "You Are Where You Are", is based on text written by Martel, which includes parts of cellphone conversations taken from moments in an ordinary day. From 2005 to 2007, Martel was Visiting Scholar at the