by JULIET WATERS

I’m nervous about meeting Montreal writer Yann Martel, not because he’s now an international literary star, but because of my review of his first novel, Self. In the author’s note to his Booker Prize winning Life of Pi, Martel writes about the commercial failure of his first novel, mentioning something about critics who damned it “with faint praise.” I praised Self as essential reading for all creative writing students, it being such a fine example of everything first novelists could do wrong. I fear a grudge.

We’re introduced. He smiles nicely, but looks away quickly. My icebreaker falls flat. Pi’s full name is Piscine Patel. Pi is the diminutive of a nasty nickname given to him at school, Piss. “So is the proper pronunciation ‘Life of Pie’ or ‘Life of Pee?’”

“It’s pie. Though in every single language it’s pronounced pee, even in Greek it’s pronounced pee. But in English it’s pie… And by the way it’s not The Life of Pi, it’s Life of Pi. There’s no article, that was a deliberate choice because ‘the’ suggests one life; ‘a’ life implies a multiplicity.”

I retreat to the obvious question, the “plagiarism” scandal. Just after Martel won the Booker, a story began to circulate that he might have stolen the plot from a book by Brazilian writer Moacyr Scliar. In an online interview, Martel had written that he’d never read Scliar’s book. But he had read a negative review of it in The New York Times by John Updike, and had been inspired by the idea of a boy stuck in a boat with a dangerous jungle cat. Problem was, Updike hadn’t reviewed the book, and no similar review has ever been found. Reports began to surface that Scliar was talking to lawyers. So what’s happening with the case?

“Dead.” Martel considers the scandal mostly a media fabrication, and it’s now agreed that there are few similarities between the two books. “I spoke with Scliar from New York. Nice man, he’s read my book and likes it. I’m reading his book now, finally. He’s actually done well with this scandal. He’s had some offers from foreign publishers. He even joked in the Brazilian press that if you want to get published abroad you should orchestrate a plagiarism scandal.”

Great. Now the fascinating question: the eerie timing of Martel’s novel, released September 11, 2001. “I was in New York September 10. I wanted to stay because my British publisher was hosting a party, and he throws amazing parties… But my book was coming out, so I left that night, and woke up the next morning thinking ‘Great. An important day in history, my book is coming out.’ I go down to the hotel lobby and everyone’s glued to the TV…” And, the rest is, of course, history. But Martel has no regrets about the timing. It’s hard to imagine a story more topical than the quirky and eventually brutal life of a young boy who decides to become a devotee of three major religions, Christianity, Islam and Hinduism. To paraphrase the most quoted line from the book, it’s a coincidence that might make you believe in God.

Martel certainly never imagined Pi would do so well. “I wanted to explore faith, and explore the strengths of organized religion,” he says. “And I thought that would be deeply unfashionable. But at the same time I thought there must be some people who are interested in religion. There can’t be nothing but raving atheists out there. There’s got to be some people who are interested in matters of spirituality, and not in an airy-fairy new agey way.” Turns out there were.

Before I know it, we’ve bonded over a our mutual, deeply unfashionable and weird fascination with Catholicism. An hour and a half later, Martel offers to sign my edition of Pi. While writing what looks like several paragraphs, he looks up with a glint in his eye and a question for me. “So you didn’t like Self?”

“Nah,” I was prepared for this. “That was John Updike.” He laughs. We let it go. :

Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Knopf, pb, 368pp, $21