Award-winning Canadian author and one of Trent University’s best-known graduates, Yann Martel has recently released his new book, Beatrice & Virgil.

The much anticipated follow-up to Mr. Martel’s best-selling novel Life of Pi, Beatrice & Virgil follows an author named Henry as he helps a strange taxidermist write a Holocaust-themed play that features a donkey named Beatrice and a monkey called Virgil.

Mr. Martel graduated from Trent in 1985 with a degree in Philosophy. His two previous novels, Self and Life of Pi, are both critical and commercial successes. Life of Pi won the Man Booker Prize and the Hugh Maclennan Prize for Fiction. He has also written a collection of short stories, The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios. In 2006, the Trent University Alumni Association presented Mr. Martel with the Distinguished Alumni Award.