Beatrice and Virgil combines the horrific with the comic, the playful with the serious, and allegory with realism to produce a novel which succeeds where Henry himself failed in his own book; to merge fact and fiction in search of a greater truth.

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It takes the Holocaust as its subject matter but in an original and provocative way, challenging the reader to examine his or her feelings towards representations of the Holocaust in fiction . . . I was hugely impressed by Beatrice and Virgil, by the brave stance that Martel takes and by his ability to move the reader in a most unusual fashion . . . worthy of discussion and debate, as all good literature should be.

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Read the roundup of Yann Martel’s event with John Boyne at the Dublin Writers Festival.

As an elliptical fable, [Beatrice and Virgil] is a model of clarity and dread.

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A slim but potent exploration of the nature of survival in the face of evil.

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Audaciously original, never less than engrossing, often disturbing, and in its denouement truly horrifying.

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Somewhere between Beckett and Ionesco…with its textures of genre and allegory, there also comes an explosion of ideas that keep the pages turning…a wild, provocative novel.

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If “Beatrice and Virgil” were a piece of music, it would be an extended fugue, beginning so quietly as to be almost inaudible, and culminating in a moment of overwhelming noise followed by silence. With each new piece of his story, Yann Martel examines the form of the novel and how it functions as a means of communication.

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Those spell-bound by Man Booker prize-winning Life of Pi will find much to love in Yann Martel’s new work of fiction… In Beatrice and Virgil, Martel again evokes the power of allegory, this time to address the legacy of the Holocaust—as well as the pleasure of fairy tales. At the heart of this novel are questions about truth and illusion, responsibility and innocence, and Martel is able to employ Beatrice and Virgil as sympathetic, nuanced vehicles for his vision. Beatrice and Virgil is a thought-provoking delight.