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Life of Pi

Book Synopsis

One boy, one boat, one tiger . . .

After the tragic sinking of a cargo ship, a 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 and best-loved works of fiction in recent years.

Our Review Panel says...

This sits somewhere between a YA novel and an adult one, but has one of the best closing lines of any book I know: ‘Very few castaways can claim to have survived so long at sea as Mr. Patel, and none in the company of an adult Bengal tiger.’ It’s a clever book that functions on many levels – as an animal tale or a story of horrific struggle to survive a shipwreck. Pi (the narrator) gives us – and the insurers in the book – the choice as to which interpretation they wish to choose. Was the tiger real or was it what Pi became in order to survive…?