num_pages: 319
description: Yann Martel's imaginative and unforgettable Life of Pi is a magical reading experience, an endless blue expanse of storytelling about adventure, survival, and ultimately, faith. The precocious son of a zookeeper, 16-year-old Pi Patel is raised in Pondicherry, India, where he tries on various faiths for size, attracting "religions the way a dog attracts fleas." Planning a move to Canada, his father packs up the family and their menagerie and they hitch a ride on an enormous freighter. After a harrowing shipwreck, Pi finds himself adrift in the Pacific Ocean, trapped on a 26-foot lifeboat with a wounded zebra, a spotted hyena, a seasick orangutan, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker ("His head was the size and color of the lifebuoy, with teeth"). It sounds like a colorful setup, but these wild beasts don't burst into song as if co-starring in an anthropomorphized Disney feature. After much gore and infighting, Pi and Richard Parker remain the boat's sole passengers, drifting for 227 days through shark-infested waters while fighting hunger, the elements, and an overactive imagination. In rich, hallucinatory passages, Pi recounts the harrowing journey as the days blur together, elegantly cataloging the endless passage of time and his struggles to survive: "It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I've made none the champion." The protagonist Piscine "Pi" Molitor Patel, an Indian boy from Pondicherry, explores the issues of religion and spirituality from an early age and survives 227 days shipwrecked in the Pacific Ocean.
language: English
title: Life of Pi
titlecomplete: Life of Pi
characters: Richard Parker, Pi Patel, Orange Juice
genres: Literature, Classics, Literary Fiction, Adventure, Novels, India, Philosophy, Magical Realism, Fiction, Fantasy
ratings_count: 1579326
places: Pondicherry, Pacific Ocean, Toronto, Ontario, Tomatlan
awards: awardedAt: 1009872000000
name: Booker Prize, awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize
category: Comic Fiction, awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Exclusive Books Boeke Prize, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Deutscher Buchpreis (German Book Prize)
category: Belletristik, awardedAt: 978336000000
name: Governor General's Literary Awards / Prix littéraires du Gouverneur général
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Lincoln Award, awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: CBC Canada Reads, awardedAt: 1420099200000
name: Luisterboek Award, awardedAt: 978336000000
name: QWF (Quebec Writer's Federation) Award
category: Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction, awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature
category: Adult Fiction
publisher: Harcourt