Tuesday, August 7, 2007

Life of Pi

THE LIFE OF PI: Yann Martel: Fiction: Harcourt, c2001: 319 pgs.

It’s a zoo tale.
It’s a search for God.
It’s a story of physical, mental, and spiritual perseverance.
It’s a mesmerizing, adventure tale of ship-wreck and survival.
It’s a point where animals become people and people become animals.
It’s a religious conversion to Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam—all at the same time.

It includes: one 16-year-old Indian boy named Pi Patel who is stranded in the ocean with an orangutan, a hyena, a zebra, and a Bengal tiger. And while he sits in the middle of the ocean, on a dilapidated lifeboat, having lost his entire family, with a man-eating tiger ready to devour him at any moment, he tells you why he still believes in God. You’ll want to know why.

It seems redundant to say, “you need to read to the end of the book”. Isn’t that a given? But you absolutely must. Because what you find out changes everything.

DLA

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