Son of Nobody

Awards & Recognition

Rights Sold

Australia & New Zealand: Text (Audio: Bolinda)

Canadian English: Knopf/Penguin Random House

China: United Sky

French (North American): XYZ Editeur

Hindi: Penguin Books India

Italy: Piemme Edizioni

Korea: Jakkajungsin

Malayalam: D.C. Books

Netherlands: Prometheus

Poland: Albatros

Portugal: Presenca

Romania: Editura Polirom

Russia: Exmo

Turkey: Eksic Parca

UK & Commonwealth excl. Canada & ANZ: Canongate Books

Ukraine: Yakaboo

US: W.W. Norton (Audio: Recorded Books)

Son of Nobody

Critical Acclaim for

“A brilliant novel of ideas….a powerful meditation on life, death, and the vanity of human wishes, all illustrated by a poem that would do Homer proud. A stunningly imagined revisitation of an ancient past.”

–Kirkus (starred review)

“[An] inventive novel about a classics scholar who makes a thrilling discovery. . . Martel’s brilliant examination of how history is made and of who pays the price for all-consuming obsessions is original, thought-provoking, and utterly absorbing.”

–Booklist (starred review)

“The author of the juggernaut Life of Pi is taking a sly, brainy swing at the Trojan War by handing the mic to the people left out of the history books… Myth meets midlife regret, and we’re intrigued.”

–Oprah Daily

“A classical scholar uncovers a lost account of the Trojan war. The translated poem unfolds at the top of the page, with heartfelt footnotes addressed to his young daughter below, in a meditation on mythmaking, homemaking and storytelling.”

–The Guardian, “Books to Look Out for in 2026”

“...the first novel in a decade from the author of Life of Pi. A fictional Homeric epic about an overlooked Trojan hero is interspersed with footnotes from failing academic Harlow Donne, who translates the poem for the daughter he has left behind.”

–The Observer

  • “As a longtime fan of Greek myth retellings like Circe and The Song of Achilles, this is one I’m especially eager to see unfold.”

    –Parade, “Best Book Releases Coming in March 2026”

  • “Inspired . . . . An appealing labor of love.”

    –Publishers Weekly

  • “An irresistible premise. . . . Martel delivers another staggering and insightful novel of ideas.”

    –Esquire, “Most Anticipated Books of 2026

“Yann Martel’s much-loved, Bookerwinning Life of Pi will be hard to match but we’re intrigued by this new tale about an academic who discovers a lost account of the Trojan War with bizarre connections to his own life.”

–The Times

“The much-loved author of 2001’s Life of Pi is back with a new novel. Known for his ability to balance intricate narratives with epic stories philosophical questioning, Martel’s Son of Nobody connects the lives of a foot soldier in the Trojan War with an academic who has abandoned his family life for his studies. A beautiful story about what we can learn from the past when it comes to homesickness, grief, love and ambition.”

–Elle Magazine, “The Most Hyped Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2026”

“In the latest novel from the bestselling author of Life of Pi, a Canadian academic at Oxford discovers a forgotten Greek epic, about a goatherd who leaves his family behind to go fight in the Trojan War. Since our academic has himself left his family behind, he finds a certain resonance in the story as he pieces it together, fusing together the ancient and modern worlds, and the concerns that unite us all.”

–Literary Hub, “Most Anticipated 2026”

“The 2002 Man Booker Prize-winning author of Life of Pi retells the Trojan war by placing at its centre Psoas of Midea, a goatherd’s son and subject of The Psoad, a 3,000-year-old epic that has been rediscovered by a Canadian academic.”

–The Financial Times, “What to Read in 2026”

“An astounding feat of literary imagination, this tale by the author of Life of Pi is profound in terms of its scholarship and grasp of history while leavened by the humor inherent in its delicious irony and its sheer storytelling brilliance… Elegiac, philosophic, revelatory, blessed in equal measures with erudition, wit and storytelling passion, Son of Nobody is not only beyond brilliant, a book that causes éclat after éclat of recognition, it is truth-telling in the deepest sense. It is hard to imagine a tale more suited to this sorry time in which we find ourselves.”

–Betsy Burton, owner and bookseller at The King’s English Bookshop, Salt Lake City

“Martel’s best-known novel, the Booker Prize-winning Life of Pi, bears unmistakable echoes of the Odyssey. Both depict the homeward journey of a seagoer beset by bad luck and fantastic misadventure. (Martel also added what was sorely missed in Homer's epic: a tiger.) Martel’s latest novel evokes Homer again — this time the Iliad — by imagining the recovery of another account of the Trojan War, this one told from the commoner's perspective. Paired with the imagined epic is still another story altogether, as the life of the academic annotating the text bleeds into a parallel tale that unfolds in the footnotes, a la Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire.”

–NPR, Most Anticipated March Books