Working with ideas, not stories

This collection was originally published by Faber in 1993, and was followed in 1996 by Martel’s first novel, Self. Then Canongate bagged the prizewinning Life of Pi in 2002, and now, in the wake of its colossal success, they have republished these four stories, ‘slightly revised’. ‘I’m happy to offer these four stories again to the reading public …’ chuckles Martel fondly in his Author’s Note, ‘… the youthful urge to overstate reined in, the occasional clumsiness in the prose I hope ironed out.’

The title story is an account of the decline and death of Paul, a young man who has contracted the HIV virus as a result of a blood transfusion in Jamaica. The narrator is a friend and fellow student of Paul’s who constructs a game which he hopes will distract Paul from his illness: they will invent a family and tell its history, using an event from each year between 1901 and 1986 as a ‘metaphorical guideline’.