Yann Martel

He's latched on to American grievance's

resentments, he has a story of lost grandeur, and it's a big story, and dozens and millions of men have taken it to heart, and they don't care about the facts, because it's a story.

And it's very hard to defeat that kind of story.

You need to counter it with another story, and that's difficult.

So the two stories, Life of Pi and this, are continuous in the sense that they both look at this idea of things for which we have no empirical evidence.

Jesus and Troy do not live in history the way the Second World War and Winston Churchill live in history.

and yet they carry a truth that is transformative, that we carry with us.

Well, you want, it's funny, people have brought up a lot the fact that he's a commoner.

That to me came completely natural.

I'm a son of the middle class of Canada.

I went to public schools.

I relied on the public healthcare system.

You know, I grew up on the shoulders, I mean, of many people helping me become who I become, the public school system, public healthcare system.

It came completely naturally to me.

And that was a reaction to the Iliad.

In the Iliad, everyone who speaks with one exception is a blue blood of some sort, is a god, a goddess, a king, or a queen.

Only one exception in Book II, Thucydides, is portrayed by Homer as the ugliest man in the Greek army.

Right from the start, before he opens his mouth, he's mocked.

And then when he speaks, what does he speak of?

He criticizes Agamemnon.