In this essay, pop-culture writer Greg Wilson looks at author Yann Martel's use of metafictional elements in his novel Life of Pi, and how those elements are used to express the narrator's greater message about God.

Metafiction is sometimes simply described as "fiction that calls attention to the fact that it is fiction." It is usually characterized by deliberate intrusions on the reader's willing suspension of disbelief; the omniscient narrator begins making comments to the reader about characters or plot details, for example, or characters themselves express some awareness that they exist within an artificial world. However, there exists another breed of metafiction that might best be described as "fiction that actively denies that it is fiction at all." In many ways, Yann Martel's Life of Pi is a blend of two seemingly contradictory metafictional breeds, both of which ultimately address the notions of truth and reality...