''The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios and Other Stories'' is a book of short stories by

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

author Yann Martel. First published as a paperback by

Knopf Canada Random House of Canada was the Canadian distributor for Random House, Inc. from 1944 until 2013. On July 1, 2013, it amalgamated with Penguin Canada to become Penguin Random House Canada. Company history Random House of Canada was established i ...

in the spring of 1993, it received little attention outside Canada until 2004, after Martel's award-winning ''

Life of Pi ''Life of Pi'' is a Canadian philosophical novel by Yann Martel published in 2001. The protagonist is Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel, an Indian boy from Pondicherry, India who explores issues of spirituality and metaphysics from an early age. He s ...

'' gained worldwide popularity and people became interested in the author's work. The book is composed of four short stories. The 2004 Canongate Books edition is updated with an author's note in which Martel writes that he is "happy to offer these four stories again to the reading public, slightly revised, the youthful urge to overstate reined in, the occasional clumsiness in prose, I hope, ironed out." All the stories except ''Manners of Dying'' have a distinct auto-biographical feel to them, the protagonist being a young white male university student having an existential crisis. In these stories, especially the first two, references to other cultural noteworthies such as ''

The Little Prince ''The Little Prince'' (french: Le Petit Prince, ) is a novella by French aristocrat, writer, and military pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It was first published in English and French in the United States by Reynal & Hitchcock in April 1943 an ...

'' and ''

Almayer's Folly ''Almayer's Folly'' is Joseph Conrad's first novel, published in 1895 by T. Fisher Unwin. Set in the late 19th century, it centres on the life of the Dutch trader Kaspar Almayer in the Borneo jungle and his relationship to his mixed heritage da ...

'' are noticeable. Most of the themes explored in these more youthful works are employed in the inner workings of the ''

''.

''The Facts behind the Helsinki Roccamatios''

The title story revolves around a man who, along with a younger friend who is dying of

AIDS Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual m ...

, invents stories about a family of Italian immigrants living in

Helsinki Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the Capital city, capital, primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Finland, most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of U ...

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

to help pass the time with his friend. To organize the plot of their strange attempt at fiction they use

Encyclopædia Britannica The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various time ...

extracts from each year starting from 1901 until present (1986) metaphorically to write each chapter. That story won the Canadian Journey Prize in 1991. In his author's note, Martel states that "Helsinki" was adapted to the stage and to the screen.

''The Time I Heard the Private Donald J. Rankin String Concerto with One Discordant Violin, by the American Composer John Morton''

This story is about a young man who visits a friend in Washington D.C. The friend works at

PricewaterhouseCoopers PricewaterhouseCoopers is an international professional services brand of firms, operating as partnerships under the PwC brand. It is the second-largest professional services network in the world and is considered one of the Big Four accounting ...

and is too busy with his demanding job to spend time with his guest. The young man, by accident, stumbles upon a performance of classical music by

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...

-veterans and is thrilled by the composer's sheer ingenuity. It ends with an extended conversation with the composer about artistic impulses, work and life.

''Manners of Dying''

In this epistolary novel Mr. Harry Parlington, warden at the Cantos Correctional Institution, writes to a Mrs. Barlow describing how her son, Kevin, executed in prison, experienced and faced his death. But multiple letters describe in totally different details his various "manners" of "dying." Examples of the chapter titles are: "''Manner of Dying 985''", "''Manner of Dying 760''". It is not clear which of those "manners of dying" Kevin Barlow actually experienced (if any) or which was sent to the mother (if any); they are presented with ambiguity, as potential and often conflicting possibilities. This story was adapted to a film by

Jeremy Peter Allen Jeremy may refer to: * Jeremy (given name), a given name * Jérémy, a French given name * ''Jeremy'' (film), a 1973 film * "Jeremy" (song), a song by Pearl Jam * Jeremy (snail), a left-coiled garden snail that died in 2017 * ''Jeremy'', a 1919 ...

, ''

Manners of Dying ''Manners of Dying'' is a 2004 Canadian drama film based on the short story of the same name (1993) by Yann Martel, winner of the Man Booker Prize for his book, ''The Life of Pi''. Plot Kevin Barlow (Roy Dupuis) will die on schedule and accord ...

''. An Australian named Kevin Barlow was sentenced to death by hanging in Malaysia in 1986, for possession of a small quantity of heroin. This caused a ten-year rift between Australia and Malaysia.

''The Vita Æterna Mirror Company: Mirrors to Last till Kingdom Come''

An anecdotal story about a young man who visits his talkative grandmother and while rummaging in her attic finds a machine that makes mirrors out of 4 ingredients: oil, sand, silver and memories. When she demonstrates the machine to him, he learns about her hurtful past from the memories she tells.

Other works by Martel

* ''Seven Stories'' (1993) * ''

Self The self is an individual as the object of that individual’s own reflective consciousness. Since the ''self'' is a reference by a subject to the same subject, this reference is necessarily subjective. The sense of having a self—or ''selfhood ...

'' (1996) * ''

'' (2001) *
We Ate the Children Last
(2004) * ''Teaching Yann Martel's Life of Pi from Multiple Critical Perspectives'' (2007) * ''

Beatrice and Virgil ''Beatrice and Virgil'' is Canadian writer Yann Martel's third novel. First published in April 2010, it contains an allegorical tale about representations of the Holocaust. It tells the story of Henry, a novelist, who receives the manuscript of a ...

'' (2010) * Short story ''The Vita Aeterna Mirror Company'' in ''The Secret History of Fantasy'', edited by Peter S. Beagle (2010) * ''101 Letters to a Prime Minister: The Complete Letters to Stephen Harper'' (2012) ** The first 55 book suggestions are available as ''What is Stephen Harper Reading?'' (2009)

External links

Yann Martel
*
''Manners of Dying''
Feature-Film Adaptation {{DEFAULTSORT:Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, The 1993 short story collections Books by Yann Martel Canadian short story collections Knopf Canada books