Son of Nobody

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2026 by Esquire • Marie Claire • Art+ • The Times • The Guardian • The Observer • The Financial Times • BBC • The Sydney Morning Herald • A Globe and Mail Spring 2026 Read • Featured in The American Booksellers Association's Spring 2026 Preview • Oprah Daily

“Among his boldest and most experimental works to date. . . . Despite all the moving parts, the novel’s structure is compelling, and the footnotes offer a clean canvas for Martel’s musings on familiar themes of war.” —Toronto Star

“Martel delivers another staggering and insightful novel of ideas.” —Esquire (The 22 Most Anticipated Books of 2026)

“An ambitious, often captivating novel. . . . Martel’s imagination is amply matched by his craft. . . . Son of Nobody invites readers to take part in its playfulness, ensnares them with a superb imitation epic, and then slowly shatters their hearts.” ―Financial Times

“A brilliant novel of ideas. . . . A powerful meditation on life, death, and the vanity of human wishes, all illustrated by a poem that would do Homer proud. A stunningly imagined revisitation of an ancient past that is every bit as awful as the present.” —Kirkus Reviews, (starred review)

“[An] inventive novel about a classics scholar who makes a thrilling discovery. . . . Martel’s brilliant examination of how history is made and of who pays the price for all-consuming obsessions is original, thought-provoking, and utterly absorbing.” —Booklist (starred review)

“Martel’s fiction within a fiction, the Psoad, has genuine charm . . . with ingenious touches throughout. I loved a passage in which the poem’s narrator describes brilliant mosaics that depict the vibrant life of Troy on its famous walls. . . . Martel (or is it Donne?) . . . bring[s] a witty freshness to standard elements of Homeric narrative.” —The New York Times

“A beautiful story about what we can learn from the past when it comes to homesickness, grief, love and ambition.” —ELLE

“Profound prose. . . . [A] challenging, rewarding new work.” —Winnipeg Free Press

“[A] bravura deconstruction of heroic narratives.” —Daily Mail

“Inspired. . . . An appealing labor of love.” ―Publishers Weekly

“An absolutely stunning read. We follow a scholar as he pieces together a lost epic of the Trojan War: not of the mighty kings focused on during The Illiad, but of a common foot soldier’s suffering during the ten long years of war.” —Sierra Hollabaugh, The American Booksellers Association

“In Son of Nobody, Yann Martel sketches an expansive double narrative of ancient Greek text and the lonely academic whose translation attempts keep circling back to his own life and loves.” —The Boston Globe

“A singular tour de force. . . . Brain-busting and beautiful. . . . Son of Nobody could be Martel’s magnum opus.” —New Zealand Listener

“Life of Pi author Yann Martel again flexes his extraordinary imagination in this latest novel. . . . Son of Nobody joins other brilliant novels involving deranged scholars, including Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire.” —Heller McAlpin, The Christian Science Monitor, ‘15 March Books to Read and Relish’

“[An] inventive novel about a classics scholar who makes a thrilling discovery. . . . Martel’s brilliant examination of how history is made and of who pays the price for all-consuming obsessions is original, thought-provoking, and utterly absorbing.” —Shelf Awareness

“Martel’s ambitious approach to [Son of Nobody’s] structure elevates what could have been a derivative—if well executed—work.” —Buzz (UK)