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, tells the story of the Trojan War through the experiences of a Greek soldier who is, at least compared with the likes of Achilles and Agamemnon, the “son of nobody.” In its learned and playful reinterpretation of long-familiar stories, Martel’s latest brings to mind both Zachary Mason’s The Lost Books of the Odyssey and Arthur Phillips’s The Tragedy of Arthur.
The book will, I predict, be divisive for readers, even those accustomed to Martel’s storytelling games. By this I mean that you might be annoyed by the structure. Perhaps you find footnotes clever but distracting; if so, you’re probably not...
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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