Life of Pi
by Yann Martel
Summary
Piscine Molitor Patel, called Pi, grows up in Pondicherry as the son of a zookeeper, and becomes a practising Hindu, Christian and Muslim simultaneously on the grounds that he simply likes God. When the Emergency makes India uncomfortable, the family sells the animals and boards a Japanese freighter for Canada. It sinks.
Pi survives in a lifeboat with a spotted hyena, an injured zebra, an orangutan and a Bengal tiger called Richard Parker, who acquired his human name through a clerical error. The middle of the novel is 227 days at sea, and it is a survival story of remarkable practical detail: how to catch fish, how to distil water, how to establish dominance over a tiger who could kill you at any moment and must be kept alive because the alternative is being alone.
Then, at the very end, two Japanese transport officials arrive and Pi tells them a second version of the voyage without any animals in it, and asks which story they prefer.
That ending is the book, and it is why people are still arguing about it. It reads as a straightforward adventure and works completely on that level, so it suits readers of twelve and readers of eighty, and the question it leaves you with is genuinely open.
One of the most widely read Booker winners ever, and among the easiest to recommend. It works for a strong young reader, for a book group, and for anyone who wants a novel about faith that is neither pious nor sneering. The animal cruelty in the early lifeboat chapters is brief but real.
Historical Context & Significance
Life of Pi won the Booker Prize in 2002, Yann Martel's third book and by far his best known.
It became one of the most commercially successful winners the prize has produced, selling many millions of copies worldwide and settling into permanent status as a school and reading group text, helped by an ending purpose built for discussion.
The novel also attracted a dispute about its origins. Martel acknowledged in his author's note that the premise had been sparked by a review of a Brazilian novel by Moacyr Scliar in which a Jewish boy shares a boat with a jaguar. Scliar was initially unhappy and the story ran widely, though the two men spoke and the matter was settled without legal action. Ang Lee's 2012 film adaptation won four Academy Awards.