30 min listen
Sam Leith’s guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Yann Martel, talking about coming late to Homer, definitely not being influenced by Pale Fire, why he can’t resist a silly animal, and his new book Son of Nobody.
Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi is a complicated organism. The action starts in southern India where we meet a precocious teenager, Piscine, who tells his parents that he wants to be known as Pi. The family own a failing zoo and they buy a Bengal tiger to attract fresh customers. The new arrival promptly rips the head off Pi’s pet goat and eats it. Next they take a ship to Canada, with the zoo stowed in the luggage hold, but the vessel hits stormy weather. The beasts break out of their cages and start to eat each other. And when the ship sinks, Pi finds himself on a life
