Chairperson: John Boyne

"So magical, so playful, so harrowing and astonishing… Every page offers something of tension, humanity, surprise, or even ecstasy."
The Times on Life of Pi

In what promises to be one of this year’s Festival highlights, Canadian novelist Yann Martel unveils Beatrice and Virgil, the much anticipated follow-up to his Booker-winning literary phenomenon Life of Pi.

When Henry receives a letter from an elderly taxidermist, he becomes embroiled in the strange and remarkable lives of Beatrice and Virgil – a donkey and a howler monkey. Together they undertake an epic journey… With the same narrative verve that made Life of Pi such a resounding success – 7 million copies worldwide! – Beatrice and Virgil takes the reader on a haunting odyssey. En route Martel asks some profound questions about life and art, truth and deception, responsibility and complicity. 

A persuasive advocate for Art as a cornerstone of society, Martel has spent the last three years lobbying the Canadian premier by sending him a book every fortnight. Join him as he takes a brief hiatus from this literary ‘campaign’ to share his own words and thoughts on the liberating power of fiction.