The Psoad is an Ancient Greek epic in free verse that follows a goatherd's son, Psoas of Midea, who leaves his wife and family to fight with the Greeks at Troy. This commoner's story was lost to time--until Harlow Donne, a Canadian academic who has left his own wife and daughter behind to study at Oxford, discovers its relics nearly thirty centuries later.
As sole translator and interpreter of The Psoad, Harlow dedicates the poem and its footnotes to his daughter, Helen. Under his gaze, a personal message to his beloved child appears in the ancient text, like a palimpsest. Despite the thousands of years and hundreds of miles that separate Psoas and Harlow, a thread hasn't frayed: the universal song of homesickness and regret, of love, ambition, and grief.
Son of Nobody takes readers from the plains of Troy to the halls of Oxford, from the classical to the contemporary, from ancient verses to modern footnotes. It is a dazzling, masterful feat of myth, history, and domesticity that explores how stories become facts, the price we pay to share them, and how we live--then, now, always.
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Blending survival adventure, philosophical inquiry, and magical realism, contemporary fiction exploring faith and storytelling captured global attention with the publication of Life of Pi. Canadian author Yann Martel became widely known when this survival tale won the 2002 Man Booker Prize, selling millions of copies worldwide and spawning an Academy Award-winning film adaptation.
Born on June 25, 1963, in Salamanca, Spain, to peripatetic French Canadian parents, Martel spent his childhood living in Spain, Costa Rica, France, Mexico, and the United States due to his father's career as a diplomat and poet. He finished his secondary education at Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ontario, and pursued university studies in philosophy. Although French is his first language, he writes his literary work in English. After releasing his debut short story collection The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios in 1993 and his first novel Self in 1996, Martel traveled through India visiting sacred sites, an odyssey that informed his novel Life of Pi. In addition to his fiction, he published 101 Letters to a Prime Minister (also released as What Is Stephen Harper Reading?), compiling recommendations sent to encourage reading. Martel was named a Companion of the Order of Canada in 2021 and resides in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, with writer Alice Kuipers and their four children.
Martel's writing frequently interrogates the nature of truth, faith, memory, and narrative structure. His works often feature allegorical framing, complex human-animal relationships, and elements of literary fantasy to address profound existential questions. Whether examining historical trauma or reimagining ancient epic poetry, his narrative approach balances rigorous intellectual debate with imaginative storytelling. His work has earned multiple recognitions, including the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and the Coventry Inspiration Book Award.
