Yann Martel

There's no reason to doubt that he existed, but very few facts, only these symbolic tales from his birth when he was 12 and forgotten in Jerusalem, and then his ministry.

three years later, the last three years of his life, on that emptiness.

What historical figure do you not know anything about him for 17 years?

Like let's say Winston Churchill.

Maybe past the age of three, we can account for a lot of his time, and there's no way there's 17 years where we know nothing about him.

So very few facts, yet an inverted pyramid of stories.

And to me, that is extraordinary, because these two stories are foundational to who we are.

That's the problem in a sense with histories.

First of all, history is random.

It's whatever happened.

There's no order to it.

The historians will find patterns, but there's no satisfying order.

You know, wars is a perfect example.

The tragedy of the Second World War, nothing went like we wanted it to go.

Nothing, nothing.

Except we won at the end, but the cost, the cost, the cost.

So history is whatever happens.

Story is elastic, plastic.

You can mold it.

which in a sense is a curious thing, because that's the thing that I find with stories with a capital S, these stories that are foundational, like the Gospels, like Troy, which, you know, the Gospels, the Iliad and the Odyssey are the foundational stories of the Greek people.