Staff Pick
I admit it: Before reading Life of Pi, I thought, There's just no way that Yann Martel can write a whole book about a teenage boy and a tiger stranded together in a lifeboat for 277 days. But I was so wrong; he pulls it off beautifully. You will love this utterly charming and unforgettable book. Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
The Jungle Book meets
Not Wanted On the Voyage in a triumph of storytelling and originality: a novel, as one character puts it, to make you believe in God.
Piscine Molitor Patel, nicknamed Pi, lives in Pondicherry, India, where his family runs a zoo. Little Pi is a great reader. He devours books on Hinduism, Christianity and Islam, and to the surprise of his secular parents, becomes devoted to all three religions. When the parents decide to emigrate to Canada, the family boards a cargo ship with many of the animals that are going to new zoological homes in North America, and bravely sets sail for the New World.
Alas, the ship sinks. A solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the surface of the wild blue Pacific. In it are five survivors: Pi, a hyena, a zebra, an orang-utan and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger.
With intelligence, daring and inexpressible fear, Pi manages to keep his wits about him as the animals begin to assert their places in the foodchain; it is the tiger, Richard Parker, with whom he must develop an inviolable understanding.
Yann Martels Life of Pi is a transformative novel: a book to delight in, to talk about and treasure. It will convince the most jaded among us - and remind the rest - that something grander is afoot in our lives than we may have realized.
From the Hardcover edition.
Synopsis
In October 2005 a worldwide competition was launched to find an artist to illustrate Yann Martel's international bestseller. Media partners included The Globe and Mail in Canada, The Times in the UK and The Age in Australia, with an international panel of judges that included Canadians Martin Levin, Books Editor of The Globe and Mail, Executive Publisher Louise Dennys and Random House of Canada Creative Director C.S. Richardson. From thousands of entries, Croatian artist Tomislav Torjanac was chosen as the illustrator for this new edition of Life of Pi.
About the Author
Yann Martel was born in Spain in 1963. After studying philosophy at university, he worked odd jobs and traveled before turning to writing at the age of twenty-six. He is the author of the internationally acclaimed 2002 Man Booker Prize–winning novel
Life of Pi, which was translated into thirty-eight languages and spent fifty-seven weeks on the
New York Times bestseller list. Yann Martel lives in Saskatchewan, Canada.
From the Hardcover edition.