With this novel, his third, Martel wanted to write a book about the Holocaust that was not historical realism, bringing imagination to bear on an atrocity the way Orwell did with Animal Farm or Picasso with Guernica. In a play-within-the-novel (written by the shop’s owner), two of the stuffed creatures come vividly to life: Beatrice, a donkey, and Virgil, a howler monkey.Ĭlearly, Beatrice & Virgil is a big risk, even for an author whose previous novel, one of the biggest literary blockbusters of the last decade, made him both rich and famous. Much of the novel’s key action takes place in a taxidermist’s shop crammed with specimens. It’s a short novel, less than 200 pages, which tackles the Holocaust, imagining that the atrocity is visited not on Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and other “undesirables,” but on animals. “Cozy” is not a word you would use to describe Beatrice & Virgil, either. He’s the kind of man you’d rather overhear than converse with: he likes to hold forth, a phenomenon best savoured from a distance. It’s perhaps not surprising that Martel is the self-appointed literary tutor of Stephen Harper, sending the Prime Minister works of fiction every other week along with an accompanying letter (the results were published last fall by Vintage Canada as What Is Stephen Harper Reading?). It becomes clear, as you talk, that he is smarter than you, more earnest and better read, a fact delicately conveyed by the slight hint of incredulity – quickly suppressed – that plays over his features whenever he mentions a book with which you are not familiar. He is cool and cerebral, a man who takes himself and his work seriously. “Cozy” is not a word you would use to describe Yann Martel.

It may be a power table but, with the baby and his elderly grandparents, it’s cozy and familial, too. Writer Susan Swan is at the table (she’s a family friend), and Haroon Siddiqui, author of Being Muslim, has turned up because Yann’s parents are translating his book into French. His wife, British-born writer Alice Kuipers (whose latest book is The Worst Thing She Ever Did), is cuddling Theo. His parents are visiting from Montreal, eager to spend time with their grandson. We meet a while later in a hotel restaurant not far from Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum, where Yann’s entourage has taken over an entire section.

It’s easy to tell, even on the phone, that he relishes the act of diaper-changing (he’s a first-time dad at age 46, and Theo, at 7 months, is relentlessly adorable). The author of the Booker Prize–winning novel Life of Pi and the much anticipated Beatrice & Virgil (published on April 10 by Knopf Canada) is explaining why he’ll be just a little late for our meeting. Yann Martel tells me he is busy changing a diaper.

Yann martel new book