Life of Pi
Winner of
the 2002 Man Booker Prize for Fiction
Pi Patel is an unusual boy. The son of a
zookeeper, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior, a fervent love
of stories, and practices not only his native Hinduism, but also Christianity
and Islam. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America
aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for new homes.
The ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a
lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and
Richard Parker, a 450-pound Bengal tiger. Soon the tiger has dispatched all but
Pi, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to coexist with Richard Parker
for 227 days lost at sea. When they finally reach the coast of Mexico, Richard
Parker flees to the jungle, never to be seen again. The Japanese authorities
who interrogate Pi refuse to believe his story and press him to tell them "the
truth." After hours of coercion, Pi tells a second story, a story much
less fantastical, much more conventional-but is it more true?
Life of Pi is at once a
realistic, rousing adventure and a meta-tale of survival that explores the
redemptive power of storytelling and the transformative nature of fiction. It's
a story, as one character puts it, to make you believe in God.
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