Product Description

After the tragic sinking of a cargo ship, one solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild, blue Pacific.The crew of the surviving vessel consists of a hyena, a zebra (with a broken leg), a female orang-utan, a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger and Pi - a 16-year-old Indian boy.The scene is set for one of the most extraordinary pieces of literary fiction of recent years. Yann Martel's Life of Pi is a transformative novel, a dazzling work of imagination that will delight and astound readers in equal measure. It is a triumph of storytelling and a tale that will, as one character puts it, make you believe in God.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1790 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 348 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Some books defy categorisation: Life of Pi, the second novel from Canadian writer Yann Martel, is a case in point: just about the only thing you can say for certain about it is that it is fiercely and admirably unique. The plot, if that’s the right word, concerns the oceanic wanderings of a lost boy, the young and eager Piscine Patel of the title (Pi). After a colourful and loving upbringing in gorgeously-hued India, the Muslim-Christian-animistic Pi sets off for a fresh start in Canada. His blissful voyage is rudely interrupted when his boat is scuppered halfway across the Pacific, and he is forced to rough it in a lifeboat with a hyena, a monkey, a whingeing zebra and a tiger called Richard. That would be bad enough, but from here on things get weirder: the animals start slaughtering each other in a veritable frenzy of allegorical bloodlust, until Richard the tiger and Pi are left alone to wander the wastes of ocean, with plenty of time to ponder their fate, the cruelty of the gods, the best way to handle storms and the various different recipes for oothappam, scrapple and coconut yam kootu. The denouement is pleasantly neat. According to the blurb, thirtysomething Yann Martel spent long years in Alaska, India, Mexico, France, Costa Rica, Turkey and Iran, before settling in Canada. All those cultures and more have been poured into this spicy, vivacious, kinetic and very entertaining fiction. --Sean Thomas

Review
The premise of this novel is so bold that only an immensely confident and imaginative writer would try to pull it off. A 16-year-old boy is emigrating with his family from India to Canada when their ship sinks and he is cast away on a lifeboat, the sole survivor. Or at least, not quite. Pi's father runs a zoo in India, and when they emigrate, they have to take some of the animals with them so they can be re-housed in a Canadian zoo. Although Pi is the only human survivor of the shipwreck, some of the animals survive: a zebra, an orang-utan, a hyena and a Bengal tiger with the unlikely name of Richard Parker. At least two-thirds of this 300-page book tell the story of Pi's seven-month ordeal on a lifeboat with no human company. For any writer, producing a novel that has very little interaction between human beings, and, for large chunks, no dialogue, is a fairly considerable challenge. Instead, we learn all about Pi and how his strong survival instinct sees him through the ordeal. This involves a combination of practical skills that help him find food and water (although a practising Hindu and vegetarian, he has to eat raw fish), mental cunning that enables him to tame the tiger (the other animals don't last very long); and spiritual strength (he is, oddly, a devotee of Islam and Christianity as well as Hinduism) that gives him the will to live. The amazing thing is that it works. Although the story is utterly implausible, Martel has clearly done huge amounts of research that make it convincing, at least on a literary level. Pi himself is a likeable character - a young boy who is mature enough to devise a sophisticated survival strategy and recount his ordeal with humour. It is, he says, the tiger who saves him. By the end he regards Richard Parker as a friend - but the feeling isn't mutual. 'I still cannot understand how he could abandon me so unceremoniously, without any sort of goodbye, without looking back even once. The pain is like an axe that chops at my heart.' This book is quite an accomplishment. For anyone weary of semi-autobiographical novels, this is one that springs entirely from an author's fertile imagination. (Kirkus UK)

Guardian, 25 May, 2002
This enormously lovable novel is suffused with wonder. It[probes] the imaginative realm with scientific exactitude, twisting reality to 'bring out its essence'.

Customer Reviews

Love it or Hate it?? -- Loved it!!
Life of Pi appears to be of those books that you either love or hate. I fancied trying something different ... I normally read thrillers and crime novels and after reading some of the reviews on here I thought I would give this one a go. Sooo glad I did. I absolutely loved it. It was the first book I have read in quite some time that I just couldn't put down. I just had to know what happened to Richard Parker! It didn't make me believe in God or even think about religion, but I did think differently about animals and particularly animals in captivity. I have always been one of those that think animals are better off in the wild. Lovely, quirky little book that has you believing in ridiculous things. Liked the little twist at the end too!

enjoyable
I bought this book for my daughter and she loved it and highly recommended it. the first part of the book was okay but the part i really loved was pi's story of his life on the boat with Peter Parker, give the book a go and judge for yourself, you won't be disapointed.

Thought provoking
This book is an excellent read. Witty, intelligent but so easily readable. I would recommend this book to anyone. This is one of the few books which provokes thought even after you have finished it.