Name: Yann Martel Age: 39 Nationality: Canadian Claim to fame: Winner of the 2002 Booker Prize
FOR Canadian author Yann Martel life is good as it gets. Last week, this thirty-nine year-old son of career diplomats had his life’s hardwork acknowledged when he was declared this year’s winner of the Booker Prize.
This year’s race to find the winner was one of the closest in the 34-year history of the Booker, one of the most prestigious awards in the literary world. Yann Martel was awarded the Booker for his book, Life of Pi, the tale of a boy and his struggle for survival following a shipwreck.
As he leapt out of his seat, after he was declared the winner, Yann was ecstatic beyond belief. “I feel like I am in the arms of a beautiful woman,” he declared. “I am overwhelmed, delighted and honoured.”
A resident of Montreal in the dominantly French-speaking Quebec province, Yann thanked his family in French, and praised readers in English for “having met his imagination halfway”. Still, in some ways, Yann was probably the hot favourite to win the award. More so after a ‘dummy’ website of the award declared him the winner in a ‘test-run’.
Still, Yann did not let success go to his head. After the ceremony, he emphasized that his was the luckiest of the six books in contention, and that winning the prize was “like a lottery”. These were appropriate words from a person who has his feet on the ground, and only started writing in his late twenties.
Yann’s yarn tells the tale of a 16-year-old boy brought up in an Indian zoo. But, then, the boy’s father decides to move the family to Canada, and sell the animals to zoos in the US. On the way, their ship sinks crossing the Pacific, and Pi finds himself in a lifeboat with a hyena, an orangutan, a zebra with a broken leg, and a Bengal tiger called Richard Parker.
Though the judges said that an “audacious book in which inventiveness explores belief” was chosen, the author said that the book makes you believe in God, or ask yourself why you don’t.
Yann is just the third Canadian winner of the Booker, after Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje. This year, the Booker was picked from 130 novels from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth. Almost every year, a media frenzy precedes and follows the award and this year was no exception. As for the winner, well, Yann Martel was richer by $50,000.
Yann was just one of three Canadian writers shortlisted for Booker 2002 — the others were Carol Shields and Rohinton Mistry. The other contenders were Welsh-born writer Sarah Waters, Australia’s Tim Winton and Irish novelist William Trevor. The glittering award ceremony was held at the British Museum in London.
FOR Canadian author Yann Martel life is good as it gets. Last week, this thirty-nine year-old son of career diplomats had his life’s hardwork acknowledged when he was declared this year’s winner of the Booker Prize.
