The Historiographic Metafictional and Postmodernist Matrix of Yan Martel‘s Life of Pi

This article examines the metafictional and postmodernist matrix of Yan Martel‘s novel Life of Pi. As a work of postmodernist and historiographic metafiction, it violates established conventions of the novel both in its form and content, and exploits techniques such as story within story, story with no beginning and end, transgression of artistic boundaries, and deconstruction. By refusing to force upon the reader a “master narrative, ” by giving him the choice of both the beginning and the ending of the story, and by showing him the possibility of interchangeability of characters and themes in fiction, the book urges the reader to have a new reading culture by participating in, sharing and contributing to the great imaginative and artistic exercise of the writer. And as a historic move, in a world that is torn by conflicting religions that are trying to overpower or destroy one another, it deconstructs the popular concept of religion in order to expose what is “undeconstructable” in religions, and to have a new “singular” conception of religion and God that is not doctrinal and dogmatic, but one that is constantly evolving.