"let me tell you a secret: the name of the greatest living writer of the generation born in the...

"Let me tell you a secret: the name of the greatest living writer of the generation born in the sixties is Yann Martel." —L'Humanité

"A story to make you believe in the soul-sustaining power of fiction and its human creators, and in the original power of storytellers like

Martel." —Los Angeles Times Book Review

Yann Martel

• b. 1963 - Spain• First published The Facts

Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, a collection of short stories

• Writing career took off with Life of Pi– Mann Booker– Best seller; 41 languages– Movie– 4 Academy Awards

• Setting: The Emergency. – Indira Gandhi was India’s Prime Minister - 1966– Election scandal– State of Emergency– New Elections

• Pi’s father - nervous. • Moving to Canada• Stop in Tomatlán, Mexico

• Impact of Setting

• Religion

• “A story that will make you believe in God.”

• Link between stories and religious beliefs.

The French Quarter: Pondicherry, India

Munnar, one of the Hill Stations in India

Pondicherry Botanical Gardens

The Pondicherry Promenade

Life of Pi can be classified as:• a postcolonial novel

• a work of magical realism • a coming-of-age tale• an adventure story• flirts with nonfiction

The Importance of StorytellingA story… within a story… within a story

3 Frames• First, author’s note• Then, life on sea• Then, true(?) story

Motifs(situations, incidents, ideas, or images repeated significantly in a literary work)

• Territorial dominance– Though Martel's text deals

with the seemingly boundless nature of the sea, it also studies the strictness of boundaries, borders, and demarcations.

• The Will to Live– This is a story about what

humans will do to stay alive

• The Nature of Truth– By the end of the story,

readers question factual truth versus metaphoric truth.

• The Nature of Faith– characters achieve comfort

through the practice of rituals

– For Pi, faith is a form of certainty; he dislikes agnostics because they refuse to commit

Symbols

• Pi’s name– Not just a shortened

version of Piscine– Allegorical figure with

multiple levels of meaning

– 3.14 (22/7) (infinity)

• The color orange– symbolizes hope and

survival