The Life of Pi is an imaginative tale told by an expressive writer. Pi Patel is the son of a zookeeper growing up in Pondicherry, India.

He possesses a curious mind and struggles to understand how Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam apply to life's moments. At the age of 16, Pi and his family decide to immigrate to Canada, taking a few animals along to zoos there. While at sea, the ship sinks sending only Pi, a zebra, a hyena, and a 450lb Bengal tiger into a single lifeboat.

For 227 days Pi has to survive on a 26 ft lifeboat using all his wits and faith. The boy decides that the fate of the tiger will mirror his own and is determined to keep the animal alive.

Yann Martel writes the story so believably that the reader is engrossed. Martel's hypnotic writing soon has the reader floating along with Pi and the tiger. Is this an allegory, a religious search for the truth or simply a well-told tale that pulls the leg of the reader?

Yann Martel and The Life of Pi won the 2002 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.