Life of Pi
2000
- teenage boys
- zoo animals
- fiction
- literature
- tigers
- translations into korean
- tiger
- award:man_booker_prize=2002
- man booker prize winner
- orphans
The story
After the tragic sinking of a cargo ship, one solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild, blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck are a sixteen-year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a zebra (with a broken leg), a female orang-utan… and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger. The scene is set for one of the most extraordinary works of fiction in recent years.
What it’s like
Lush, meditative prose with a chatty, curious narrator who digresses into zoology, religion and the habits of animals, so the page often feels like a warm lecture delivered by someone who loves his subject. The first stretch is bright and sensory, with the smells and noise of an Indian zoo and the grave pleasure of a boy learning to read animals. Once the story moves to a small lifeboat under a huge, blank sky, the imagery turns to sun-bleached glare, rain, flat calm and endless blue, and the sentences slow to match. Pacing is patient, with long reflective passages between sudden jolts. Violence is real but brief and matter-of-fact: animals kill and eat one another, and some scenes are sharp and bloody without lingering on gore. The emotional register is wondering and quietly grave, and the central arc follows a grieving, deeply devout young man who learns to live alongside his fear and his own stories. Good for slow reading on a long train journey, for readers who enjoy philosophical detours, and for anyone who likes survival stories that are as much about belief as about endurance.
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