simple: It is a Robinson Crusoe for the new millennium with the island being a
floating lifeboat on the Pacific and with a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger named
Richard Parker instead of Friday. Sounds weird? It is. It is also one of the most
wonderful novels I have ever read.
‘Robinson’ in this version is the adolescent Piscine Molitor Patel. He calls
himself ‘Pi’ (= 3.14) for short, and he is the second son of an Indian zookeeper
living in Pondicherry, part of ex-French India. He is a religious boy, quite the
little zealot who is not only a professed Hindu and Muslim but also at the same
time a devout Christian. He lives happily with his family until his father decides
to move the Patel family to Canada. All of the animals of father’s Pondicherry
Zoo are sold and most of them will be transported on the same cargo-ship that
will take them to the New World.
The Japanese cargo-ship ‘Tsimtsum’ does not survive a storm on the pacific
and before he knows it, Pi finds himself in the midst of the ink-black waves and
torrential rain on a small lifeboat he has to share with a zebra with a broken leg,
a hyena, a female orang-utan and Royal Bengal tiger.
Pi will need his faith direly, apply all his knowledge of animal husbandry and
use all the information in a survival-guide that he finds aboard the lifeboat to
stand just a small chance of survival. Surviving on a lifeboat in the Pacific all on
your own is difficult; surviving with two predators aboard is even more difficult.
The story is told in three parts: there is a 100-page first part in which Pi tells us
about his life in Pondicherry, his religious fervour and his family. We get to
know Pi as an intelligent and inquisitive human being, interested in the
empirical as well as the mystical.
The second part, which makes up the bulk of the novel, starts with the words:
‘The ship sank’. It tells the story of the survival of Pi and his companions on the
lifeboat floating around on the Pacific for over two hundred days. Poor pacifist
Pi, son of a Indian zoo-keeper, Muslim, Christian, Hindu and vegetarian has to
kill fish and sea-turtles in order to keep himself alive. Himself, and in his best
interest Richard Parker too, otherwise Richard Parker might have him for
breakfast.
It seems unlikely that a story of survival on a couple of floating square metres in
such interesting company makes for much pleasant reading. This is completely
untrue, however. The genius creation of Pi, deservedly mentioned in the title, is
such a superbly crafted character that you actually feel bad when towards the
end of the book it seems he might be saved after all. Martel has created with Pi
a character that is wholly able to take his place besides Robinson Crusoe and
other literary creations that have become famous over the years for their
extraordinary personalities.
This novel would have been great is it had consisted of these two parts, but
there is more: a short third act that is a coda that possibly puts everything that
went before in a completely different and exciting new light. This is the reason
to read everything that went before; this third part of the novel establishes the
right of the novel to exist and to be read. It took my breath away.
