tagged w/ Life of Pi
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Yann Martel, author of the bestselling book, Life of Pi, and winner of the Man Booker prize in 2002, has recently sold the rights to his third book. It was bought up at auction last month by Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of Random House, the world’s largest publisher of consumer books.
So what's got people talking? In a nutshell,
"Like 'Life of Pi,' the new book is an allegory — this time, about the Holocaust — involving animals. It relates the story of an encounter between a famous writer and a taxidermist who is writing a play that features dialog between a donkey and a monkey imprinted on a shirt."
Hmm.
This complicated structure, combined with the high sticker price, is said to be the reason only three publishers bid on the novel. Yet even with its unorthodox structure, the currently untitled book (to be released sometime next year) is not without precedent.
"'I’ve noticed over the years of reading books on the Holocaust and seeing movies that it’s always represented in the same way, which is historical or social realism,' Mr. Martel, 46, said in a telephone interview from his home in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. 'I was thinking that it was interesting that you don’t have many imaginative takes on it, like George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ and its take on Stalinism.' Mr. Martel said that although there had been a few works like “Life is Beautiful” in film or the “Maus” books by Art Spiegelman that had been more metaphorical, artists were generally “fearful of letting the imagination loose on the Holocaust.”
continued at link.
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Sooo...
Booked Wants to Know:
Many believe that the domain of the artist, or the writer, is without boundaries. Nothing can escape art, and nothing is off-limits to the one who creates it, even the most painful or controversial components of human existence and human history. Books have the power to change the way people think, and can consequently be used as positive tools or weapons with deadly consequences.
That said, are the real world outcomes of a book the responsibility of the author? If an author writes a book that inspires world peace, do we praise her/him? If an author writes a book that inspires World War III, do we condemn her/him? At what juncture, if there is one, does a book cease to be the offspring of one author and become instead the offspring of humanity?
Book it, and tell us what You think.Yann Martel, author of the bestselling book, Life of Pi, and winner of the Man Booker... more
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