Items related to Life of Pi

Martel, Yann Life of Pi ISBN 13: 9780676977608

Life of Pi - Hardcover

 
9780676977608: Life of Pi
View all copies of this ISBN edition:
 
 
Life of Pi is a masterful and utterly original novel that is at once the story of a young castaway who faces immeasurable hardships on the high seas, and a meditation on religion, faith, art and life that is as witty as it is profound. Using the threads of all of our best stories, Yann Martel has woven a glorious spiritual adventure that makes us question what it means to be alive, and to believe.

Growing up in Pondicherry, India, Piscine Molitor Patel -- known as Pi -- has a rich life. Bookish by nature, young Pi acquires a broad knowledge of not only the great religious texts but of all literature, and has a great curiosity about how the world works. His family runs the local zoo, and he spends many of his days among goats, hippos, swans, and bears, developing his own theories about the nature of animals and how human nature conforms to it. Pi’s family life is quite happy, even though his brother picks on him and his parents aren’t quite sure how to accept his decision to simultaneously embrace and practise three religions -- Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam.

But despite the lush and nurturing variety of Pi’s world, there are broad political changes afoot in India, and when Pi is sixteen his parents decide that the family needs to escape to a better life. Choosing to move to Canada, they close the zoo, pack their belongings, and board a Japanese cargo ship called the Tsimtsum. Travelling with them are many of their animals, bound for zoos in North America. However, they have only just begun their journey when the ship sinks, taking the dreams of the Patel family down with it. Only Pi survives, cast adrift in a lifeboat with the unlikeliest of travelling companions: a zebra, an orang-utan, a hyena, and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.

Thus begins Pi Patel’s epic, 227-day voyage across the Pacific, and the powerful story of faith and survival at the heart of Life of Pi. Worn and scared, oscillating between hope and despair, Pi is witness to the playing out of the food chain, quite aware of his new position within it. When only the tiger is left of the seafaring menagerie, Pi realizes that his survival depends on his ability to assert his own will, and sets upon a grand and ordered scheme to keep from being Richard Parker’s next meal.

As the days pass, Pi fights both boredom and terror by throwing himself into the practical details of surviving on the open sea -- catching fish, collecting rain water, protecting himself from the sun -- all the while ensuring that the tiger is also kept alive, and knows that Pi is the key to his survival. The castaways face gruelling pain in their brushes with starvation, illness, and the storms that lash the small boat, but there is also the solace of beauty: the rainbow hues of a dorado’s death-throes, the peaceful eye of a looming whale, the shimmering blues of the ocean’s swells. Hope is fleeting, however, and despite adapting his religious practices to his daily routine, Pi feels the constant, pressing weight of despair. It is during the most hopeless and gruelling days of his voyage that Pi whittles to the core of his beliefs, casts off his own assumptions, and faces his underlying terrors head-on.

As Yann Martel has said in one interview, “The theme of this novel can be summarized in three lines. Life is a story. You can choose your story. And a story with an imaginative overlay is the better story.” And for Martel, the greatest imaginative overlay is religion. “God is a shorthand for anything that is beyond the material -- any greater pattern of meaning.” In Life of Pi, the question of stories, and of what stories to believe, is front and centre from the beginning, when the author tells us how he was led to Pi Patel and to this novel: in an Indian coffee house, a gentleman told him, “I have a story that will make you believe in God.” And as this novel comes to its brilliant conclusion, Pi shows us that the story with the imaginative overlay is also the story that contains the most truth.
From the Trade Paperback edition.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:
Yann Martel's imaginative and unforgettable Life of Pi is a magical reading experience, an endless blue expanse of storytelling about adventure, survival, and ultimately, faith. The precocious son of a zookeeper, 16-year-old Pi Patel is raised in Pondicherry, India, where he tries on various faiths for size, attracting "religions the way a dog attracts fleas." Planning a move to Canada, his father packs up the family and their menagerie and they hitch a ride on an enormous freighter. After a harrowing shipwreck, Pi finds himself adrift in the Pacific Ocean, trapped on a 26-foot lifeboat with a wounded zebra, a spotted hyena, a seasick orangutan, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker ("His head was the size and color of the lifebuoy, with teeth"). It sounds like a colorful setup, but these wild beasts don't burst into song as if co-starring in an anthropomorphized Disney feature. After much gore and infighting, Pi and Richard Parker remain the boat's sole passengers, drifting for 227 days through shark-infested waters while fighting hunger, the elements, and an overactive imagination. In rich, hallucinatory passages, Pi recounts the harrowing journey as the days blur together, elegantly cataloging the endless passage of time and his struggles to survive: "It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I've made none the champion." At one point in his journey, Pi recounts, "My greatest wish--other than salvation--was to have a book. A long book with a never-ending story. One that I could read again and again, with new eyes and fresh understanding each time." It's safe to say that the fabulous, fablelike Life of Pi is such a book.

First published in 2002, Martel's breathtaking breakout novel became an international bestseller and went on to win the Man Booker Prize, and was also named Amazon.com's Best Book of 2002. In 2005, after an international competition, Croatian artist Tomislav Torjanac was selected to illustrate a special edition of Life of Pi that features 40 stunning illustrations that present a new perspective on this modern classic. --Brad Thomas Parsons


Amazon.com Exclusive: Outtakes from Tomislav Torjanac's Early Illustrations for Life of Pi


Tomislav Torjanac's Artist Statement


Island Study

Lifeboat Study

"I quite deliberately dressed wild animals in tame costumes of my imagination."


"Only when they threw me overboard did I begin to have doubts..."

"And what a thump it was."

"I threw the mako towards the stern."

From the Back Cover:
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK of 2002
Pi Patel, a God-loving boy and the son of a zookeeper, has a fervent love of stories and practices not only his native Hinduism, but also Christianity and Islam. When Pi is sixteen, his family and their zoo animals emigrate from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship. Alas, the ship sinks -- and Pi finds himself in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger. Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi. Can Pi and the tiger find their way to land? Can Pi's fear, knowledge, and cunning keep him alive until they do?
"An impassioned defense of zoos, a death-defying trans-Pacific sea adventure a la Kon-Tiki, and hilarious . . .: This audacious novel manages to be all of these." -- "The New Yorker"
"Life of Pi could renew your faith in the ability of novelists to invest even the most outrageous scenario with plausible life." -- "The New York Times Book Review"
"Life of Pi is a real adventure: brutal, tender, expressive, dramatic, and disarmingly funny. . . . It's difficult to stop reading when the pages run out." -- "San Francisco Chronicle"
Yann Martel was born in Spain in 1963 of Canadian parents. He grew up in Costa Rica, France, Mexico and Canada, and has traveled extensively on his own. After studying philosophy at university, he worked variously as a dishwasher, tree planter and security guard. Then he began to write. When he's not living somewhere else, he lives in Montreal.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

  • PublisherKnopf Canada
  • Publication date2004
  • ISBN 10 067697760X
  • ISBN 13 9780676977608
  • BindingHardcover
  • Number of pages480
  • Rating
Buy Used
Condition: Fine
A very fine copy of the Canadian... Learn more about this copy

Shipping: US$ 24.00
From Canada to U.S.A.

Destination, rates & speeds

Add to Basket

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780156027328: Life of Pi: A Novel

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  ISBN 13:  9780156027328
Publisher: Mariner Books Classics, 2003
Softcover

  • 9781786891686: Life Of Pi (Canons) [Paperback] [Jul 05, 2018] MARTEL YANN

    Canongate
    Softcover

  • 9780151008117: Life of Pi

    Marine..., 2002
    Hardcover

  • 9780857865533: Life of Pi (Film Tie-in)

    Marine..., 2012
    Softcover

  • 9780156030205: Life of Pi

    Marine..., 2004
    Softcover

Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace

Stock Image

Martel, Yann
Published by Knopf Canada, Toronto, ON (2004)
ISBN 10: 067697760X ISBN 13: 9780676977608
Used Hardcover First Edition Quantity: 1
Seller:
West End Editions
(Burlington, ON, Canada)

Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. A very fine copy of the Canadian, first edition and first printing, thus. Large print edition. The book is very fine in all aspects with a bright, fine, dust jacket; square and tight binding. In very collectible condition. Images are available upon request. Seller Inventory # 000976

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy Used
US$ 98.00
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 24.00
From Canada to U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds