In this week's edition of Endnotes, we take a look at Booker winner Yann Martel's Son of Nobody, following a literature scholar who discovers an alternate account of the Trojan War. in its review PW calls it "an appealing labor of love."

Here's how the book came together:

Yann Martel

Author

“I was inspired by Homer’s Iliad. The Trojan War still speaks to us today because it was a siege, and waiting, prolonged waiting, is very trying. Waiting is an incubator of wild ideas and unwarranted rage, hence the violence that can arise when it finally ends. Waiting fascinates the ancient and modern minds because to learn how to live is to learn how to wait, how to deal with the sand as it falls through the hourglass. We all live before the walls of Troy.”

Jackie Kaiser

Proprietor and Agent, WCA

“When I joined WCA, I assumed responsibility for an existing list of clients. Lucky for me, Yann Martel was among them. That was 25 years ago. There are many qualities I love about Yann’s writing, and one of them is his ability to surprise us. Each new book is ambitious in its own way.”

John Glusman

Executive Editor, Norton

“The acquisition process was comparatively simple. I had never read anything quite like Son of Nobody. I was intrigued by its structure and fascinated by how two story lines—one ancient, one
contemporary—complemented each other and then converged, to heartbreaking effect. My colleagues on our editorial board could not have been more enthusiastic about it.”

Rafaela Romaya

Art Director, Canongate

“Son of Nobody is an ambitious and timely book: an epic poem and its footnotes that intertwine two stories. The heart of the cover originates in a line from the poem that resonated with me: ‘With our feet we had to fight waves of water, while with our hands we had to fight waves of men.’ I imagined the motion of the waves; a rolling sea; the cyclical turning of the text, which I matched with the idea of the fragment—the book is being assembled from scraps of papyrus; and the mosaic.”