Yann Martel’s Son of Nobody unfolds as an elaborate and imaginative work of discovery and scholarship. The novel takes the form of a Canadian doctoral student’s English-language translation and extensively footnoted presentation of an otherwise unknown epic contemporaneous with the Iliad. The poem he has discovered, the Psoad…
Randy Boyagoda
Randy Boyagoda is a professor of English literature at the University of Toronto. His novels include Original Prin, Dante’s Indiana, and, most recently, Lords of Serendipity.
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Randy Boyagoda
The opening lines of Dante’s Inferno have been, with the rest of his poem, both translated and reimagined by poets and artists for centuries: “Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita / mi ritrovai per una selva oscura / ché la diritta via era smarrita.” When it comes to writing in English, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s…