Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel

Beatrice and Virgil

Yann Martel

This is a book to give yourself up to. I was drawn in by the sublimely wonderful writing and audacious plot. Then, defenseless, I was confronted with the darker truth at its heart.

Extract
It's not how writers write. A novel is not an entirely unreasonable creation, nor is an essay devoid of imagination. Nor is it how people live. People don't so rigorously separate the imaginative from the rational in their thinking and in their action. There are truths and there are lies - these are the transcendent categories, in books as in life. The useful division is between the fiction and nonfiction that speaks the truth and the fiction and nonfiction that utters lies.
Parallels
  • Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
  • The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht
  • Yann Martel by Life of Pi