Life of Pi Yan, 'Life of Pi' is told from two alternating points of view, the main character Pi in a flashback and Yann Martel himself, who is the "visiting writer" (Martel 101) interviewing Pi many years after the tiger in the boat story. This technique of the intrusive narrator adds the documentary realism to the book, setting up, like a musical counter-point, the myth-making, unreliable narrator, Pi. The reader is left to ponder at the end whether Pi's story is an allegory of another set of parallel events. The novel is a work of fiction set in the summer of 1977 that
Middlesex (novel) him about winning the award, Eugenides was dubious, noting that "[i]t seemed very unlikely that he would be the messenger of such news." At the time, Eugenides was with the Canadian author Yann Martel who confirmed the photographer's words after checking on the hotel's computer. A waiter brought champagne to Eugenides, and Greek women started kissing him. When journalists called Eugenides, he declined to take their calls, saying in an interview later that he wanted to "celebrate the moment instead of leaping immediately into the media maelstrom." The novel received the Ambassador Book Award, Spain's Santiago de Compostela Literary Prize,