Yann Martel

Yann Martel is a Canadian writer, born in Salamanca, Spain, on 25 June 1963. The son of Canadian diplomats, he grew up in several countries and later lived in Canada, which became his literary home. His fiction is playful and thoughtful, often using animals, stories and imagined worlds to ask big questions about faith, suffering, memory and the way people make sense of their lives. His second novel, Life of Pi, won the Booker Prize in 2002 and brought him a worldwide audience. Later books such as Beatrice and Virgil and The High Mountains of Portugal continued to mix realism with fable, and he has also written short stories and essays. Martel is admired for his clear, inventive storytelling and for his belief that fiction can help readers think about hard subjects with imagination and sympathy.