Life of Pi

Yann Martel’s Life of Pi is a Canadian philosophical novel and Booker Prize winner published in 2001. Yann Martel was born in Spain in 1963 to French-Canadian parents but spent his childhood in various countries including Costa Rica, France, Mexico, and Canada. Martel’s father was a diplomat who completed his PhD dissertation on Spanish writer Miguel de Unamuno at the University of Salamanca. Yann Martel studied philosophy at Trent University in Canada before becoming a novelist.

Other works by this author include The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, The High Mountains of Portugal, and Beatrice And Virgil.

Martel’s global upbringing mirrors Life of Pi’s setting as a trans-Pacific sea journey, which also takes place in Pondicherry, India, Mexico, and Toronto, Canada. The initial setting in Pondicherry, India, is significant for two reasons: First, Pondicherry is unique in Indian colonial history as it was French Indian territory, not British like the rest of the subcontinent, before it transferred to the Indian union in 1954. Second, Pi’s family abandoned Pondicherry to make a sea voyage across the Pacific during the era of Indira Gandhi in which she declared a State of Emergency resulting in the overthrow of the Tamil Nadu government.