Description
Life of Pi is a novel, released in 2001, by Yann Martel. It is a survival adventure, spiritual novel with a young boy, Piscine Molitor Patel – known as Pi, surviving a shipwreck and being left on the Pacific Ocean entirely alone.
The novel is set during the childhood of Pi in Pondicherry, India, where his father owns a zoo. Pi is an interesting young boy who believes in three religions at the same time: Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam. Pi’s family heads to Canada for immigration. He boards a cargo ship with other animals from the zoo. The ship sinks during a storm, and Pi winds up stranded on a lifeboat with several animals: two hyenas, one zebra, one orangutan, and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.
A large portion of the book tells the story of Pi’s 227-day oceanic voyage, in which he must use his wit and faith to keep himself alive. Pi’s relationship with Richard Parker is central to the novel because he harbors both deep-seated fear and radical dependence on the tiger for companionship and survival. Themes that characterize the novel include faith, survival, and the blurred line between reality and storytelling.
Life of Pi is a philosophically charged novel, which raises fundamental questions on the belief system, the nature of truth, and human will to survive. The magical realism employed by Martel specially in the ambiguous ending leaves the readers wonder which version of Pi’s story to believe as the “truth.” Martel won the Man Booker Prize in the year 2002, and a very successful film was adapted from this novel.
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