Yann Martel
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
One of the great allies of the Trojans was King Memnon of Ethiopia.
There was trading.
So if you trade in goods, you trade in stories.
You trade in stories of wonder.
you would surely hear of stories of animals up the Nile.
So what if a Mycenaean soldier traveled up the Nile?
I mention that in the book as positing perhaps why, but I do mention it's very strange.
Also, there are elephants.
Well, I said King Memnon of Ethiopia.
There are elephants in Ethiopia.
So if he's mentioned by Homer, the people, King Memnon and his people, surely the elephants, and they traded in ivory, the Greeks did.
The Greeks did ivory, not from walruses, from elephants.
So the guy was wrong in the New York Times.
Well, the cutest koala.
How can you not love your koalas?
Well, that's just technical.
They're great storytelling vehicles.
We're very cynical about ourselves, about humans, but we're not cynical about animals, especially wild animals.
We project onto them marvel, and marvel