LIFE OF PI

The Jungle Book meets Not Wanted On the Voyagein a triumph of storytelling and originality: a novel, as onecharacter 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. Hedevours books on Hinduism, Christianity and Islam, and to thesurprise of his secular parents, becomes devoted to all threereligions. When the parents decide to emigrate to Canada, thefamily boards a cargo ship with many of the animals that are goingto new zoological homes in North America, and bravely sets sail forthe New World.
Alas, the ship sinks. A solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on thesurface of the wild blue Pacific. In it are five survivors: Pi, ahyena, a zebra, an orang-utan and a 450-pound Royal Bengaltiger.
With intelligence, daring and inexpressible fear, Pi manages tokeep his wits about him as the animals begin to assert their placesin the foodchain; it is the tiger, Richard Parker, with whom hemust develop an inviolable understanding.
Yann Martel’s Life of Pi is a transformative novel: a bookto delight in, to talk about and treasure. It will convince themost jaded among us – and remind the rest – that something granderis afoot in our lives than we may have realized.
From the Hardcover edition.