Self
Awards & Recognition
Shortlisted for the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award
Honourable Mention: Quill & Quire Best Books of 1996
Hot Type’s National Book Poll “Author to Watch”
Rights Sold
Canada: Knopf
Fr. Canada: XYZ
Holland: Prometheus
Italy: Piemme
Korea: Jakkajungsin
Poland: Bertelsmann
UK: Faber
Self
Critical Acclaim for
“From the opening phrase, Martel’s debut novel displays its linguistic elasticity, a beguiling notion that meaning can go either way…. A bounce through sex, joy, violation and travels in hot places, all written with a bright, deft blur of taste, thought and touch…. Is it a thriller or a serious meditation on gender and identity? Whichever, Martel finds dazzling ways of expressing the hitherto unexpressed.”
–The Mail on Sunday (London)
“…a powerful story, punctuated by humor and tragedy in much the way a real life is…. Like Rohinton Mistry and Michael Ondaatje, Martel is a brilliant storyteller. But it is in the presentation of his story that his true genius lies…. The reader is given the rare opportunity to ‘get inside’ the character, to see things through his eyes while hearing his thoughts…. [It is in] Martel’s ability to present equally believable male and female voices, a feat that has escaped some of the most laudable writers in history…that Martel’s sensitivity is most apparent…. [H]is work stand out for its self-assuredness and sophistication.”
–Vancouver Sun
“Yann wonderfully represents the child’s universe as a seamless whole…. A penetrating, funny, original and absolutely delightful exploration…. [Martel] is a natural and often brilliant essayist and expositor, with a knack for aphorism and a rich cultural and literary foundation.”
–Globe and Mail
“AN UNFORGETTABLE EXPLORATION OF A SELF…. Daring… Martel’s prose, with its energy and precision, gives the novel so much life…. He captures very effectively stages of awareness in childhood and adolescence, in particular, and has a solid feel for metaphor…. [The novel’s] prose is so vigorous and confident and sure-footed, its story-telling so compelling, that Self’s education does end up being part of the reader’s. Like all good educations, it is hard to forget, once absorbed.”
–The Toronto Star
“Extraordinary…. Only rarely, in works by Martin Amis, Nicholson Baker or Kazuo Ishiguro, say, does one come across a character or narrator so perversely and entertainingly intelligent, witty and articulate. Martel ups his protagonist’s appeal with a life history that manages to be both imaginatively accessible and romantically exotic…. Martel’s narrator has some interesting things to say about the human condition…and he says those things eloquently and with disarming wit.”
–NOW Magazine
“…[the rape scene] is harrowing, sad and utterly gripping… [Martel] is a powerful writer and storyteller, almost a force of nature… [his] voice is a unique one.”
–The Edmonton Journal
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“…the narrator is clever and appealing, the climax is heartstopping…”
–Paragraph
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“…a delicious tale of sliding gender from a very promising new talent.”
–Attitude (UK)
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“…[a] work of alarming maturity for any novel, let alone a first.”
–Toronto Life, Best & Worst of ‘96
“…now and again you encounter things that read so true, the sound they make resonates for hours, or even days. Self is still ringing in my ears.”
–Hour Magazine
“… a powerfully delineated rape, during which…the use of split pages to convey different languages becomes a vivid expression of a fragmented self… breezy style and witty insights.”
–The Times (London)
“What sets Self apart is not only the quirky story, but Yann’s wonderful use of language.”
–Sunday Telegram
“…stylish, witty and playful…. A vivid and hilarious recollection of the protagonist’s earliest memories…. [Martel] is loaded with talent.”
–Montreal Gazette
“A brilliant, and very funny exploration of growing up, with Martel’s characteristic perceptiveness, eye for ironic detail and gift for phrase turning…. A fresh pair of eyes on the extramundane world around us.”
–The Financial Post
“…an eye for gorgeous detail, a charming sense of humour, intelligent thought and a strong voice.”
–Montreal Mirror
“Self is mesmerizing with its explosions of language, its nuances of meaning, its bizarre Kafkaesque plot, and its disarming openness. Linguistic treats dance across the page, and the subject – a young person’s life – careens between the remarkably realistic and the wildly imaginative…. Martel tracks the narrator’s growth with precision and sympathy… Pain is described in an exquisitely fresh manner…. In a twist worthy of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, Self does some serious gender bending and we are catapulted out of one world of realism – a boy’s – to another – a girl’s. The girl’s experience is described with the same intensity and honesty as the boy’s, from physical longing and confusion to emotional extremes.
“There’s absolutely no doubt that Martel is a gifted writer: his language saunters and soars. The exploration into male and female worlds is done with sense and sensibility…. I admire Martel for his immense reach. He’s already far beyond ordinary novels…. Along with gender considerations, he explores the issues of nationalism and language, violence, education, writing, sexuality, sufferance and, above all, love…. He deserves to be read.”
–The Calgary Herald
“…a narrative orchestrated by an outspoken ‘I’ that is candid, intelligent, likable, life-embracing, protean, chatty, smug, and mischievous…. Fine, largely celebratory accounts of earliest childhood memories; of masturbation and shitting; of life at a boarding school readers will think they recognize; of university days…of trips to Portugal, Greece, Turkey, Mexico, South America; of passionate love affairs. This is an easy book to pick up again after you have to put it down… because Martel is a bright, amiable, enthusiastic writer with an original, playful mind that he is not afraid to use... I found myself waiting, as I read, for the event, the upset, the necessary piece of information, that might account for so apparently untroubled and unvexed and blameless a state of self-driven enthusiasm for almost 300 pages. And when it comes it is both expected and unexpected in the right degrees, and it is truly harrowing, because Martel is a good writer.”
–Greg Hollingshead, Quill & Quire
“This is an exhilarating piece of fiction, as bold and original as anything I’ve read in a long time… the novel’s pivotal scene – a wrenching description of a violent assault – [has] a powerful intimacy…. [Self] is a singular fictional creation. The novel’s ambitions are large. On one level, Self is a portrait of the artist as a young person. But it is also an intelligent and entertaining meditation on sexuality, language and identity, the nature of longing, and on the very process of creating things: selves, characters, and novels…. Clearly Martel is a writer who must walk through every door that his elegant, fecund imagination opens. From the very first page, he issues himself challenges that are both aesthetic and moral. Happily, Yann Martel, at just 33, already has the talent and confidence to meet almost all of them.”
–Montreal Gazette / Ottawa Citizen
“This strange, haunting and highly original first novel…falls into the great European tradition of Gunter Grass and others in which surreal events unfold in a super-real context…. Martel’s descriptive powers are remarkable and his story-telling compulsive, but what sets his writing apart is his grasp of one essential truth: that whatever happens outside ourselves is never as important or as ‘real’ as our internal lives…. Martel is an exciting new talent.”
–5 star review in Q
“Martel’s unnamed protagonist is…so charming and convincing…. A masterful work of modern-day mythology.”
–NOW Magazine
“…strange and beautiful…. Bold…. Richly international in scope… Martel can break your heart if he wants to, and near the end of Self, that’s just what he does.”
–The Georgia Straight
“Reading a Yann Martel story is like eavesdropping on an intensely personal monologue. His narrators let you in, unabashedly, on their most intimate experiences: toilet training, sex, menstruation, the loss of a beloved friend, the visceral effect of a beautiful piece of art, the devastation of being raped…. Martel has a deft touch that shuns over-writing, preferring nuance to elaborate descriptives. His most evocative passages are neatly turned, deceptively simple sentences that jump off the page…. His vision and daring speak for the likelihood that he will go on to create a body of talented work.”
–Books in Canada