num_pages: 352
description: The Jungle Book meets Not Wanted On the Voyage in a triumph of storytelling and 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 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 Martel’s Life of Pi is a transformative 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.
language: English
title: Life of Pi
titlecomplete: Life of Pi
characters: Richard Parker, Orange Juice, Pi Patel
genres: Fiction, Magical Realism, Adventure, Philosophy, India, Literature, Classics, Novels, Fantasy, Literary Fiction
ratings_count: 1579513
places: Toronto, Ontario, Tomatlan, Pondicherry, Pacific Ocean
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: Knopf Canada