00:00 We are in conversation with Jan Martel, the Man Book Prize winner, famously in India at
00:05 least in his book, Life of Par.
00:09 Jan, could you tell us about your India Connect?
00:20 You have said India has dazzled you, you have earlier said.
00:23 You were hit very hard by India.
00:25 I think that's an effect that's quite common with most Westerners.
00:28 There is something about India that is very stimulating to the imagination.
00:32 A lot more, for example, than China.
00:34 People are amazed by China because of its economic power and the way they have built
00:39 all this amazing infrastructure.
00:41 Not only people are struck imaginatively by China, just to give a counterexample, as they
00:45 are in India.
00:46 There is something about India's culture, religion, its traditions that have an intoxicating
00:52 effect on Westerners.
00:54 There is such a diversity of life in India.
00:58 I was amazed, like most people, I was amazed.
01:00 The sheer numbers, the colourfulness, the different traditions, everything was just
01:04 amazing.
01:05 I was amazed by India, so I came here for the first time in the late 90s to backpack
01:10 for six months.
01:11 Three years later I decided to come back for another six months and that's when I started
01:15 working on Life of Par.
01:17 You are connected to Pondicherry, being a French Canadian and Pondicherry being a former
01:23 French colony.
01:25 You base the Patel family from Pondicherry.
01:30 What was the basis of the idea that struck you?
01:34 Well, some things in a novel, sometimes in art, are symbolic and are calculated by the
01:41 author and some things are more spontaneous.
01:43 So you are right, I mean, as you would know, Patel is actually a Gujarati name, but Indians
01:49 move around, so it is quite likely you would have Patels in Pondicherry.
01:52 I just wanted it because I liked it.
01:54 There is something about it that I found quite beautiful, quite relaxing, and I just thought
01:59 why not?
02:00 And there is this garden in Pondicherry, a little garden that looked like it might have
02:04 had a zoo.
02:05 In fact, there are some cages with some birds and a few other animals.
02:08 I just thought, and there is a little train that I mentioned in the author's note, and
02:11 I just imagined, oh, this might be a place where there was once a zoo.
02:14 So, there is no deep symbolism, I just liked that part of the Indian world and there is
02:19 this park that looked like it could be a place where there was once a zoo, so why not put
02:23 it there?
02:24 So, do you feel that you have any pressure to produce another bestseller?
02:30 The success of Lifetime was freak.
02:32 I mean, it sold 50 million copies, a Hollywood movie, the Booker Prize.
02:37 That can never be reproduced.
02:39 And let's not forget, art is always a gift.
02:42 If you create a painting, a song, a poem, a novel, it's a gift to the world.
02:48 And if you get something in return, you're grateful.
02:51 You can't have any expectations.
02:53 So, no, the book I wrote after Lifetime was a novel called Beatrice and Virgil about how
02:56 we think and talk about the Holocaust.
02:59 It did a fraction as well as Lifetime, not only in terms of sales but in terms of reviews.
03:04 That's the way it goes.
03:05 You know, you just hope to get at least a few good reviews.
03:09 It's not about fame and commerce.
03:11 It's just about writing the best book you can and offering it to the world.
03:15 So, my publishers I'm sure hope for having more bestsellers, but you can't plan that.
03:20 You can't calculate it.
03:21 You just have to let the muse speak and hope that the muse produces the best book possible.
03:26 You've used animals as characters in your works.
03:29 Yeah.
03:30 Can you explain that?
03:31 They're good vehicles for symbolism.
03:34 You know, an animal in a book can be what it is, a tiger, a donkey, a monkey, but it
03:39 also carries a heavy load of symbolism.
03:42 We tend to invest animals with symbolic resonance.
03:45 So, you know, a lot of questions I get about life are, what does the tiger mean?
03:50 They don't ask me what Pi means or what Pi's mother means.
03:53 They ask me what the tiger means.
03:54 So, we see animals in two ways, as what they are and what they might mean to us.
03:59 So, that's very useful for a storyteller.
04:01 How has your life panned out after the success of Life of Pi?
04:06 And with your other works, has it anywhere hampered?
04:11 No, on the outside, it's maybe busier.
04:14 You know, I travelled more.
04:16 I travelled for like a year and a half on the success of Life of Pi, going to festivals
04:19 and book launches all around the world.
04:21 It may be quote unquote famous, it may be wealthier, but that's all on the outside.
04:26 On the inside, you don't change.
04:28 You know, you're still the same kind of writer with the same strengths, but also the same weaknesses.
04:34 So, after a couple of years, you know, I felt like writing another book.
04:37 So, I closed the door and all that outside noise and I started a new book.
04:41 And I said, just because you did one great book, doesn't mean you're suddenly a better writer
04:45 who will just knock off great books afterwards.
04:47 You know, that's not the way it works.
04:49 So, it has not hampered your work in any way?
04:52 No, it maybe raised other people's expectations, but that's their problem.
04:55 I can just do the best that I can.
04:57 Your publishers expect that?
04:59 Well, yeah, I'm sure they did, but I have good publishers.
05:02 They know there's no formula.
05:04 You can't just magically produce something.
05:06 You have to trust each writer to do their best, which is certainly what I do.
05:11 And then, you know, it's up to Ganesh.
05:14 So, you really don't feel trapped in that sense?
05:17 No.
05:18 Don't forget, you may think of me as writing Life of Pi.
05:21 Life of Pi is two books away, you know, back, and I'm on to my next book.
05:25 So, you know, there's two books since Life of Pi.
05:27 In fact, three, two novels and a collection of letters to a prime minister.
05:30 And I'm now actively working on my next book, which is set during the Trojan War.
05:34 So, Life of Pi is very much yesterday's book for me.
05:37 Okay.
05:39 So, like, life after Life of Pi, how has it been?
05:43 It's been wonderful.
05:44 Like I said, I've written other books.
05:46 I've had four children.
05:49 You know, life is good.
05:50 You know, when you're successful as an artist, there's no better life
05:53 because it's so deeply creative.
05:55 You know, out of nothing, you create a story.
05:57 And that's deeply, deeply gratifying.
05:59 So, you know, my life was good before Life of Pi.
06:01 I had two other books before Life of Pi.
06:03 I made very little money on them.
06:05 But I also didn't have a family.
06:06 I didn't have a car.
06:07 I just rented a place.
06:08 I had roommates.
06:10 But I lived like a prince because every day I was investing myself in a story.
06:15 You know, while I was writing Life of Pi, when I had no money, my office was a life book.
06:19 And in that life book, there was a tiger.
06:21 It was a lovely life.
06:22 And the same thing with my two previous books.
06:24 You know, a life of the mind is the best kind of life.
06:28 I started late, so I have four young children--nine, seven, five, three, boy, girl, boy, boy.
06:34 And they're wonderful.
06:35 You know, a child is like a Russian novel.
06:37 It's long.
06:39 It's great character.
06:40 Lots of plot.
06:42 You know, so it's a wonderful thing.
06:44 To be a parent is, in a sense, to be like a writer.
06:47 You're writing a book, but the book takes control of you.
06:51 It's very gratifying.
06:52 I have less time to be a writer because of my children, but it's well worth it.
06:56 What do they feel about you as a writer?
06:58 As a writer?
06:59 Oh, they're not at all impressed.
07:01 Daddy wrote Life of Pi, who cares?
07:02 They roll their eyes.
07:04 You know, I think that's always like that.
07:06 You know, kids bring you back to earth.
07:10 You know, not that I have any inflated ego, but really, kids, you're just daddy.
07:13 You know, they shrug their shoulders, they roll their eyes.
07:18 Jan, we see a lot of Buddhist influence in your work.
07:21 I don't know if it's Buddhist or just religious.
07:24 You know, each religion...
07:26 You know, it's interesting when you look at religions,
07:28 each has a kind of a different feel, a different characteristic you see from the outside.
07:33 So, you know, for example, Christianity is very much about love.
07:38 Love, love, love, love, love.
07:39 They're always talking about love.
07:41 Islam is very much about unity.
07:44 You know, the Ummah, the brotherhood and sisterhood of mankind, of humankind,
07:48 is very important to Muslims.
07:50 It's a very social religion.
07:52 Christianity isn't necessarily that social.
07:54 You know, Christianity is very vertical.
07:56 There's you, there's Christ, there's God.
07:58 It's like this.
07:59 Islam is very more horizontal.
08:01 It's very much about others.
08:02 It's a very, very social religion.
08:04 Hinduism, to me, is an extraordinarily colorful narrative, symbolic religion.
08:10 There's a million gods, a million stories.
08:12 It reflects very ably the complexity of the human psyche, sort of like the Greek myths.
08:17 The Greek myths are a very good map of the human mind.
08:20 Hinduism is the same, too.
08:21 And what I love about Hinduism is it's so heterodox.
08:24 There's no orthodoxy in Hinduism.
08:26 So there's Hinduisms, plural.
08:28 And that's unusual in religions.
08:30 Usually religions have an orthodoxy.
08:32 You know, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, this kind of an orthodoxy,
08:36 or a push towards orthodoxy.
08:38 Hinduism isn't like that.
08:39 It's dizzily varied.
08:41 That's very exciting.
08:43 Again, I just want to touch upon, have you been to the Buddhist circuit in the East?
08:50 Well, I went to Bihar, where Buddhism started.
08:53 I think that, you know, I met the Dalai Lama, as it happens, in Dharamsala.
09:01 But as I said, you know, it's interesting that I find Buddhism influenced Hinduism a lot.
09:05 You know, I do like Buddhism, too, but no more, no less than any other religion.
09:09 Have you traveled the eastern part of the country?
09:12 This is my first time in Calcutta.
09:15 But I've been to West Bengal, but only to Siliguri.
09:18 So, yeah, West Bengal I traveled less than I did other states like UP and the South.
09:24 Yeah, I went from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, as the expression goes.
09:28 There's a few states I missed, you know, but I've backpacked pretty intensely for about, in total, about 13 months.
09:35 That's a very intense way to look at a country.
09:38 You really get to feel it and see it.
09:40 Can you tell us about your next book?
09:42 Well, it's set during the Trojan War.
09:44 So, this mythical war between the Greeks and the Trojans around 1200 BC.
09:51 And I'm positing an alternate tradition, not the one that you hear of in Homer,
09:57 but another tradition in competition with the Homeric tradition that would have been suppressed by the Homeric tradition.
10:02 And it's going to be a novel in two voices.
10:04 On the top of the page, you'll get these fragments from antiquity, these fragments of this lost tradition.
10:09 And on the bottom of the page, you'll get the commentary on this tradition from a scholar, a fictitious scholar.
10:14 So, it'll be this dialogue between antiquity and modernity, between these fragments of fiction and the sort of non-fiction at the bottom.
10:20 Now, it'll be fictional anyway, but it'll have a slightly more non-fiction feel.
10:24 So, there'll be, you know, text, blank, or blank text.
10:29 I like that alternation.
10:31 So, as I said, I'm discussing this ancient tradition, the Trojan War tradition.
10:35 When do we expect to see this?
10:37 I've actually finished my research, and I'm going to actually start the writing of it, you know, in the next week when I get back from India.
10:44 I'm literally going to start the writing, hopefully at the end of next week sometime.
10:47 Thank you so much.
10:50 My pleasure.
10:51 [Music]
