Yann Martel, who wrote The Life of Pi, which is a popular book that is perhaps the first novel to include its book club commentary inside the text, has signed a reported 3 million dollar book deal for his next novel. It is going to be an allegorical story about the Holocaust featuring talking animals. The New York Times has the story:

“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,” Mr. Martel, 46, said in a telephone interview from his home in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. “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.”

I can't wait to see this "imaginative take" on the Holocaust, in much the same way that I want to watch that old, never-released Jerry Lewis movie about a clown in a concentration camp.