Yann Martel
Yann Martel is a Canadian novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter born on June 25, 1963, in Salamanca, who works in both the English and French languages.
Martel was educated at Trinity College School and later at Trent University. His work across fiction forms brought him the Journey Prize early in his career. His novel Life of Pi stands as his most prominent work, selling more than twelve million copies worldwide and earning him the Booker Prize. He has also received the Companion of the Order of Canada, the Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature, and the Goncourt des animaux, reflecting the broad international reach of his writing. In addition to his literary output, Martel has also worked as a musician, a dimension of his career that sits alongside his prose and screenwriting activities.
Life of Pi was adapted into a film directed by Ang Lee, and that production garnered four Academy Awards, extending the novel's presence well beyond the page. Martel's output spans novels, short stories, prose, and screenwriting across two languages, and the range of honors he has accumulated — from the Booker Prize to his appointment as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and his recognition as a Companion of the Order of Canada — marks the sustained attention his work has received from literary and cultural institutions on multiple continents. His standing as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature remains one concrete measure of the place his writing holds within the broader English-language literary world.
Quotes by Yann Martel
Yann Martel's insights on:
Progress is unstoppable. It is a drumbeat to which we must all march. Technology helps and good ideas spread these are two lows of nature. If you don’t let technology help you, if you resist good ideas, you condemn yourself to dinosaur hood! I am utterly convinced of this.
All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive.
I still cannot understand how he could abandon me so unceremoniously, without any sort of goodbye, without looking back even once. The pain is like an axe that chops my heart.
Bananas don't float. You said the Orangutan floated to you in a bundle of bananas, but bananas don't float.
Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love but sometimes it was so hard to love.
