Yann Martel

Yann Martel was born in Salamanca, Spain, where his French-Canadian parents were students. They later joined the Canadian foreign service, and he grew up in Costa Rica, France, Spain and Canada. French is his first language, but he writes in English. He studied philosophy at Trent University in Ontario and worked odd jobs while he began to write.

His first books were a story collection, The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios (1993), and a novel, Self (1996). Life of Pi (2001) tells of Pi Patel, an Indian boy who survives 227 days in a lifeboat on the Pacific with a Bengal tiger called Richard Parker. At the end, Pi tells a second, darker version of events and asks which story his listeners prefer. The novel won the Booker Prize in 2002, and Ang Lee made it into a movie in 2012. Martel said a review of a novella by the Brazilian writer Moacyr Scliar gave him the idea, and he thanked Scliar in the book.

His later novels include Beatrice and Virgil (2010), The High Mountains of Portugal (2016) and Son of Nobody (2026). He lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, with the writer Alice Kuipers and their four children.