Life of Pi

• Genre: Fiction; adventure
• Originally Published: 2001
• Reading Level/Interest: College/Adult
• Structure/Length: 3 parts, 100 chapters; approx. 460 pages; approx. 12 hours, 53 minutes on audio
• Protagonist/Central Conflict: Sixteen-year-old Pi Patel, a hyena, a wounded zebra, an orangutan, and a large Royal Bengal tiger are stranded on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean after their cargo ship sinks. When only Pi and the tiger are left, they must coexist until their rescue 227 days later. Pi tells his two stories to the authorities, but which is to be believed?
• Potential Sensitivity Issues: Murder; cannibalism; animal death

Yann Martel, Author

• Bio: Born in 1963; Canadian author born in Spain; studied philosophy at Trent University in Ontario; worked odd jobs as a parking lot attendant, a dishwasher, and a security guard at the Canadian embassy in Paris; has traveled through Mexico, Iran, Turkey, India, and South America; ran a book club with Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister of Canada, from 2007-2011; invited to be a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2014; on the Board of Governors of the Saskatoon Public Library from 2010-2015
• Other Works: Seven Stories (1993); Self (1996); Beatrice and Virgil (2010); 101 Letters to a Prime Minister: The Complete Letters to Stephen Harper (2012); The High Mountains of Portugal (2016)
• Awards: Man Booker Prize (2002)