In a brilliant new novel that is as original and luminous as his Booker Prize-winning Life of Pi, Yann Martel takes the reader on a haunting odyssey.

When Henry, a writer, receives an envelope containing a play and a note asking for his help, he is intrigued. The author of the play turns out to be a skilled taxidermist, with a shop unlike any Henry has ever seen, bursting with the palpable life of a lost, vibrant world. And when the mysterious, elderly taxidermist introduces Henry to Beatrice and Virgil, his life is changed forever.

In Beatrice and Virgil, Martel asks profound questions about life and art, truth and deception, responsibility and complicity.

'This is a brilliantly worked, eerily confident performance. There has been nothing like it since his last. And as for writing of animals, no one has been as good as Henry/Martel since D.H. Lawrence and Ted Hughes.' Sydney Morning Herald