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Life of Pi
Life of Pi is a Canadian philosophical novel by Yann Martel published in 2001. The protagonist is Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel, an Indian boy from Pondicherry, who explores issues of spirituality and metaphysics from an early age. After a shipwreck, he survives 227 days while stranded on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker and an orangutan named Orange Juice along with several other zoo animals, raising questions about the nature of reality and how it is perceived and told.
The novel has sold more than ten million copies worldwide. It was rejected by at least five London publishing houses before being accepted by Knopf Canada, which published it in September 2001. Martel won the Man Booker Prize the following year. It was also chosen for CBC Radio's Canada Reads 2003, where it was championed by author Nancy Lee.
The French translation L'Histoire de Pi was chosen in the French CBC version of the contest Le Combat des livres, where it was championed by Louise Forestier. The novel won the 2003 Boeke Prize, a South African novel award. In 2004, it won the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in Best Adult Fiction for years 2001–2003. In 2012 it was adapted into a feature film directed by Ang Lee with a screenplay by David Magee.
In 2022, the novel was included on the "Big Jubilee Read" list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors, selected to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II.
The book begins with a note from the author, which is an integral part of the novel. Unusually, the note describes mostly fictional events. It serves to establish and enforce one of the book's main themes: the relativity of truth.
In the 1960s, the narrator, Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel, grows up as the son of the manager of a zoo in Pondicherry. While later recounting his life there, he offers insight on the antagonism of zoos and expresses his thoughts on why animals react less negatively than proponents of the idea suggest.
The narrator describes how he acquired his full name as a tribute to the swimming pool in France. After schoolmates tease him by transforming his first name into "Pissing", he establishes the short form of his name as "Pi" when he starts secondary school. The name, he says, pays tribute to the transcendental number which is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.
In recounting his experiences, Pi describes several other unusual situations involving proper names: two visitors to the zoo, one a devout Muslim, and the other a committed atheist, bear identical names; and a 450-pound (200-kilogram) Bengal tiger at the zoo bears the name Richard Parker as the result of a clerical error which switched the tiger's name with the name of his human captor.
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Life of Pi
Life of Pi is a Canadian philosophical novel by Yann Martel published in 2001. The protagonist is Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel, an Indian boy from Pondicherry, who explores issues of spirituality and metaphysics from an early age. After a shipwreck, he survives 227 days while stranded on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker and an orangutan named Orange Juice along with several other zoo animals, raising questions about the nature of reality and how it is perceived and told.
The novel has sold more than ten million copies worldwide. It was rejected by at least five London publishing houses before being accepted by Knopf Canada, which published it in September 2001. Martel won the Man Booker Prize the following year. It was also chosen for CBC Radio's Canada Reads 2003, where it was championed by author Nancy Lee.
The French translation L'Histoire de Pi was chosen in the French CBC version of the contest Le Combat des livres, where it was championed by Louise Forestier. The novel won the 2003 Boeke Prize, a South African novel award. In 2004, it won the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in Best Adult Fiction for years 2001–2003. In 2012 it was adapted into a feature film directed by Ang Lee with a screenplay by David Magee.
In 2022, the novel was included on the "Big Jubilee Read" list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors, selected to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II.
The book begins with a note from the author, which is an integral part of the novel. Unusually, the note describes mostly fictional events. It serves to establish and enforce one of the book's main themes: the relativity of truth.
In the 1960s, the narrator, Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel, grows up as the son of the manager of a zoo in Pondicherry. While later recounting his life there, he offers insight on the antagonism of zoos and expresses his thoughts on why animals react less negatively than proponents of the idea suggest.
The narrator describes how he acquired his full name as a tribute to the swimming pool in France. After schoolmates tease him by transforming his first name into "Pissing", he establishes the short form of his name as "Pi" when he starts secondary school. The name, he says, pays tribute to the transcendental number which is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.
In recounting his experiences, Pi describes several other unusual situations involving proper names: two visitors to the zoo, one a devout Muslim, and the other a committed atheist, bear identical names; and a 450-pound (200-kilogram) Bengal tiger at the zoo bears the name Richard Parker as the result of a clerical error which switched the tiger's name with the name of his human captor.