Books I love: Life of Pi

Life of Pi by Yann Martel was written in 2001 and won the Man Booker Prize and other book awards. I had only read it recently, having acquired an illustrated copy published in 2007. The illustrations were done by Tomislav Torjanac.

This is a fantasy novel about Pi - Piscine Molitor Patel - a teenage Indian boy, exploring issues of spirituality and realising the benefits of religions. The story is in three parts.

Part 1 has Pi as an adult in Canada reminiscing about his childhood in Pondicherry, India, and his family decision to sell their zoo and move to a new country.

Part 2 is about how the ship they were on sank and Pi became the only human survivor with the other survivors being a zebra, an orang utan, a hyena and a Bengal tiger called Richard Parker (RP). Pi survived 227 days on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean in an uneasy coexistance with only RP, after the hyena ate the zebra and the orang utan, and RP ate the hyena.

In Part 3, two officials from the Japanese Maritime Department try to find out why the ship sank. They do not believe Pi's account of his survival, so he substitutes the animals for humans. In the end, they preferred his story with the animals.

P.S. I was away in 'Incredible !ndia' from the 31st October till 10th November 2011 (hence my choice of the above book because of the Indian 'element') and will blog about my trip later.



My copy of Life of Pi (CNB 2011)

An illustration by Tomislav Torjanac (CNB 2011)

Ex Libris CNB 1908