by Yann Martel
First published 2002
Pi Patel grows up surrounded by wild animals in his family's Indian zoo. At sixteen, he boards a Japanese cargo vessel with his parents and their animals, bound for a new life in North America. The ship goes down in a storm. Pi escapes to a lifeboat with four survivors: a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Richard Parker, a massive Bengal tiger weighing 450 pounds. The tiger quickly kills the other animals, leaving Pi alone with the most dangerous predator imaginable. For more than seven months, Pi must use every scrap of his animal knowledge and storytelling gifts to stay alive on the open ocean. He learns to fish, collect rainwater, and most crucially, establish dominance over Richard Parker without provoking an attack. This becomes a daily dance of survival, requiring Pi to balance his fear with cunning strategy while fighting hunger, thirst, and despair.
Genres: fiction, animals, survival, literary-fiction, adventure, coming-of-age
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, suspenseful
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, man-vs-nature, unreliable-narrator
Setting: India, North America
Period: 20th-century
326 pages · Unknown Binding · Harcourt Books
Content warnings: animal-death, violence