Like Life of Pi, it will be an allegory involving animals – this time tackling the Holocaust via the medium of a donkey and a howling monkey. Jamie Byng, who will publish the book at Canongate in 2010, said it was "one of the most ingenious, heart-breaking and strangely beautiful books" he had read in years. "The absorbing pair of relationships that lie at the book's heart, one between a donkey and a howling monkey and the other between a writer and an elderly taxidermist, also make this one of the most original books I have ever read," Byng added.

The book will also, Byng said, deal with the very issue Martel himself is facing: the challenge of how to write another book when you've had a success "as unexpected and huge" as Life of Pi. Martel told the New York Times that he decided to tackle the Holocaust in this new novel because he felt that there was a paucity of metaphorical, or imaginative, works produced about it. "I've noticed over the years of reading books on the Holocaust and seeing movies that it's always represented in the same way, which is historical or social realism. I was thinking that it was interesting that you don't have many imaginative takes on it like George Orwell's Animal Farm and its take on Stalinism," he said. "My novel is an attempt to get a distillation on it, and see if there is a way of talking about the Holocaust without talking about it literally."

via Martel signs multi-million deal for Life of Pi follow-up | Books | guardian.co.uk.

As we all wait for Martell's next work, the closest parallel I can recommend  is Pixar's beautiful film Up. While the themes are quite different, both tell fantastic tales and, well, if you haven't read/seen one, I don't want to ruin it for you. Let's just say that after you've read Pi, go back and re-watch Up...

Do you want to better understand the Mumbai siege? Would you like to increase your understanding of contemporary India? Have you wondered how this whole "outsourcing" thing has come to pass? Then pick up this page-turning Man Booker Prize winner.

The White Tiger is part A Confederacy of Dunces and part Life of Pi, with a touch of Machiavelli's The Prince and a little bit of Atlas Shrugged thrown in for good measure. 

Our tale is dictated and recorded by the protagonist, Balram Halwai. Given no name but "boy" because his family worked too hard to think up a real name, Balram is the prototypical Indian entrepreneur. 

Upon hearing on the radio that Mr. Jiabao, the Premier of China, will be visiting India to learn about the sub-continent's tremendous entrepreneurial spirit, Balram decides that, for the Premier's sake, he must intervene. Knowing that the official guides will give China's Premier a false account of what is happening in India, Balram takes it upon himself to record his own life story as a means toward understanding the true India. 

Told as a collection of spoken recordings, made each night for a week in the wee hours of the morning and addressed directly to Mr. Jiabao, our Bangalore entrepreneur guides the reader, along with the Premier, through modern India as experienced by someone who started out among the poorest of the poor and wound up a wealthy man. 

Inspired wit and ignorance, lust and greed, corruption and murder, reason and pride, cunning and madness, luck and careful planning. All play a role in this allegorical work.