• Winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize for Fiction

  • The International # 1 Bestseller

  • Winner of the Quality Paperback Book Club’s New Voices Award for Best New Fiction of 2002

  • Shortlisted for the Dublin IMPAC Award

  • Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize 2002 (Best Book, Canada-Carib Region)

  • Shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction

  • Winner of the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction

  • A Quill & Quire Best Book of 2001

  • A Poets & Writers Magazine Best Book of Fiction for 2002

  • A CBC Canada Reads 2003 Selection

  • Shortlisted for the Borders Original Voices Award for Fiction, 2003

  • Shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Writing

  • Shortlisted for the Spoken Word Award for Abridged Modern Fiction and the Spoken Word Award for Best Abridgment

  • Shortlisted for a Torgi Award

  • Winner of the Scene It Read It prize of the Coventry Inspiration Book Awards

  • A 2003 Selection of the One Book Arizona Program

  • A 2003 Selection of the One Book Santa Barbara Program 

  • Winner of The Boeke Prize (South Africa)

  • Winner of the Deutschen Bücherpreis 2004

  • Winner of the La Presse Prix du Grand Public

  • Finalist for the 2004 Book Sense Book of the Year Award – Paperback

  • Inaugural Pick of the AOL Red Book Club

  • A Top 25 “Best of the Best” Book Sense Selection

  • Selected for Esquire’s list of the Top Ten Books of 2003

  • 61 Weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List

Rights Sold


Audio (abridged UK): HarperCollins 

Audio (abridged/unabridged World English): HighBridge 

Arabic: Al-Kamel Verlag Japan: Take Shobo 

Azerbaijan: Alatoran

Bengali: Sandesh Korea: Jakkajungsin 

Brazil: Rocco Latvia: Atena 

Bulgaria: Prozoretz Lithuania: Jotema 

Canada: Knopf Marathi: Penguin India

Catalan: Columna Malayalam: DC Books 

China: Crown (Complex) Norway: Dinamo 


China: Yilin (Simplified) Norway: Lydbokforlaget (Audio) 

Croatia: Znanje Poland: Znak 

Czech: Argo Poland: QES Agency (Audio)

Czech: Czech National Radio (Radio) Portugal: Difel 

Denmark: Borgens Romania: Editura Polirom 

Denmark: Den Grimme Aelling (Audio) Russia: Exmo 

Estonia: Pegasus Russia: Soyuz (Audio) 

Film: Fox 2000 Serbia: Alfa 

Finland: Tammi Slovakia: Ikar 

France: DeNoel Slovenia: Mladinska (+Audio)


Fr. Canada: XYZ Editeur Spain: Destino 

Germany: Fischer Sri Lanka: Sarasavi 

Greece: Psichogios Sweden: Brombergs 

Hindi: Penguin India Sweden: Bonnier (Audio) 

Holland: Prometheus Thailand: Image 

Hungary: Europa Turkey: Inkilap 

Iceland: Bjartur UK: Canongate 

India: Penguin US: Harcourt Brace

Indonesia: Gramedia  

Israel: Kinneret

Italy: Piemme

Critical Acclaim for

Life of Pi


Life of Pi could renew your faith in the ability of novelists to invest even the most outrageous scenario with plausible life. . . . Although the book reverberates with echoes from sources as disparate at Robinson Crusoe and Aesop’s fables, the work it most strongly recalls is Ernest Hemingway’s own foray into existentialist parable, The Old Man and the Sea.” 

The New York Times Book Review


“An impassioned defense of zoos, a death-defying trans-Pacific sea adventure a la Kon-Tiki, and a hilarious shaggy-dog story . . . : This audacious novel manages to be all of these.” 

The New Yorker


“An impassioned defense of zoos, a death-defying trans-Pacific sea adventure a la Kon-Tiki, and a hilarious shaggy-dog story. . . : This audacious novel manages to be all of these.” 

The New Yorker


“A fabulous romp through an imagination by turns ecstatic, cunning, despairing and resilient . . .  Martel displays the clever voice and tremendous storytelling skills of an emerging master.” 

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  • “…Compelling storytelling…”

    The Independent (UK)

  • “A riotous imaginative excursion…”

    New Statesman

  • “…Mesmeric, dreamlike…”

    New Internationalist