“That’s the nature of grief: It’s a creature with many arms but few legs, and it staggers about, searching for support”
The internationally bestselling novel from Yann Martel, the Booker-winning author of Life of Pi
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
Lost in Portugal.
Lost to grief.
With nothing but a chimpanzee.
A man thrown backwards by heartbreak goes in search of an artefact that could unsettle history. A woman carries her husband to a doctor in a suitcase. A Canadian senator begins a new life, in a new country, in the company of a chimp called Odo. From these stories of journeying, of loss and faith, Yann Martel makes a novel unlike any other: moving, profound and magical.
A New York Times Bestseller
An Australian Independent Bookseller Bestseller
#1 on The Globe & Mail’s Bestseller List
#1 on Toronto Star’s Bestseller List
#1 on Maclean’s Bestseller List
#1 on National Post’s Bestseller List
#1 on McNally Robinson’s Bestseller List
An ABA Indie Bestseller
“Replete with every bizarre and beautiful thing on earth … his many fans will delight”
the Times
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“Moments of real wonder … glorious”
sunday Times
“His best since Life of Pi … miraculous”
washington Post
“Martel is an original, strange and subtle thinker”
Ursula Le Guin
guardian
“Surprising and yet entirely believable”
observer
Yann Martel is the author of a short story collection, The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, and of four novels, Self, Beatrice & Virgil, Life of Pi (for which he was awarded the 2002 Man Booker Prize), and his latest, The High Mountains of Portugal. Life of Pi was adapted for the silver screen by Ang Lee, garnering four Oscars. Martel also ran a guerilla book club with Stephen Harper, sending the former prime minister of Canada a book every two weeks for four years. The letters that accompanied the books were published as 101 Letters to a Prime Minister. Martel lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, with the writer Alice Kuipers, and their four children.
The High Mountains of Portugal
“The moral and spiritual implications of his tale have, in the end, a quality of haunting tenderness”
Ursula K Le Guin
Guardian