Many Worlds

Be it pathbreaking feminist classics or religious tomes, star author Yann Martel tells Shahnaz Siganporia how faith and fiction open the doors to magical thinking.

- Shahnaz Siganporia

Few authors sweep Booker juries and bestseller lists, and even fewer get adapted into an Oscar-winning film about magical creatures and a lost Indian boy. Yann Martel is renowned for creating worlds that are as literary as they are accessible, and as incredulous as they are real. Over two decades ago he found faith while backpacking in India, and recently beguiled audiences at the Jaipur Literature Festival with his signature millennial seer-meets-contemporary storyteller charm. Martel shares how his own stories have been inspired by faith, fiction and fable.

What made you want to become a writer?

I was 19 years old, drifting through university and I had been reading plays by Eugene O’Neill around the time the movie Reds came out, about the life of the American communist John Reed (who wrote Ten Days That Shook The World, about the October Revolution). In that movie, Reed is played by a young, charismatic Jack Nicholson. There’s a scene in which O’Neill (Nicholson) is in his hotel room, working on a play. Diane Keaton comes in and they have a scene where he talks to her about one of his plays. It was the first time I understood a writer as an actual human being. Until then, I’d seen books as other-worldly creations, magical things that were just there, on shelves. Upon seeing that scene, I asked myself, “I wonder if I can write something?” I did, an absolutely dreadful play. But it got me writing. I fell in love with playing with words and stories.