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
Life of Pi of the name, in the famous legal case R v Dudley and Stephens (1884) where a shipwreck again results in the cannibalism of a cabin boy named Richard Parker, this time in a lifeboat. A third Richard Parker drowned in the sinking of the "Francis Spaight" in 1846, described by author Jack London, and later the cabin boy (not Richard Parker) was cannibalized. Having read about these events, Yann Martel thought, "So many victimized Richard Parkers had to mean something." Martel has mentioned that a book review he read of Brazilian author Moacyr Scliar's 1981 novella "Max and the Cats"