I chose the sloth because its demeanour-calm, quiet and introspective-did something to soothe my shattered self. My zoology thesis was a functional analysis of the thyroid gland of the three-toed sloth. My fourth-year thesis for religious studies concerned certain aspects of the cosmogony theory of Isaac Luria, the great sixteenth-century Kabbalist from Safed. My majors were religious studies and zoology. After one year of high school, I attended the University of Toronto and took a double-major Bachelor’s degree. I have kept up what some people would consider my strange religious practices. It's a story, as one character puts it, to make you believe in God.Īcademic study and the steady, mindful practice of religion slowly brought me back to life. Life of Pi is at once a realistic, rousing adventure and a meta-tale of survival that explores the redemptive power of storytelling and the transformative nature of fiction. The Japanese authorities who interrogate Pi refuse to believe his story and press him to tell them "the truth." After hours of coercion, Pi tells a second story, a story much less fantastical, much more conventional-but is it more true? When they finally reach the coast of Mexico, Richard Parker flees to the jungle, never to be seen again. Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to coexist with Richard Parker for 227 days lost at sea. Pi finds himself alone in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Richard Parker, a 450-pound Bengal tiger. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for new homes. The ship sinks. The son of a zookeeper, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior, a fervent love of stories, and practices not only his native Hinduism, but also Christianity and Islam. Winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize for Fiction
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