thestar.com

Yann Martel has stepped off the train from Montreal. He's tired, he looks like he needs a shave and he's still a little dazed from just having moved out of his Montreal apartment and broken up with his girlfriend.

He'll be bound for England in November for the British launch of his novel Self, and then he'll see his parents, who are Canadian diplomats in France, and then maybe he'll visit India again - he and his girlfriend spent a large part of last year travelling through the East. After that, who knows? Perhaps he'll settle in Montreal - or maybe even Saskatoon. They say Saskatoon is quite a nice little city, full of artists.

``Not that I'm a travel writer. I'm not interested in writing about India, for example - Indian writers will write about India. It's not fear of voice appropriation, it's because it's already complicated enough being Canadian - I don't want even to begin imagining being Indian.