Life of Pi

The first section is an adult Pi Patel’s rumination over his childhood. The main character, Piscine Patel (aka "Pi") talks about his life living as the son of a zookeeper, and speaks at length about animal behaviour, while also speaking about his religion – Pi practices Islam, Hinduism and Christianity, having seen merits in all three religions. He says "I just want to love God."

Fleeing political oppression, Pi and his family leave Pondicherry for Canada. En route, the Japanese ship Tsimtsum carrying him and his family mysteriously sinks. Crew and passengers are lost at sea and Pi is the only survivor. He manages to survive due to being tossed into the lifeboat before the ship goes under, where he is joined by a zebra that jumps into the boat and breaks its leg due to the impact. Pi then foolishly helps a dangerous 450-pound Bengal tiger (incongruously named Richard Parker), to board the life boat only to realize the riskiness of this deed once the tiger is almost aboard and can not be stopped. There are other animals on the boat with Pi, including a hyena, an orangutan (named Orange Juice) and sundry rats and cockroaches. At first Pi believes that the tiger had abandoned the boat soon after its rescue, since he sees no sign of him on the lifeboat and does not think it can coexist with a hyena. It is not long before the hyena begins to feed on the zebra. After the zebra's death, the hyena kills the orangutan, prompting Pi to approach it. It is then that he notices that Richard Parker has been resting under a tarpaulin and has been aboard the lifeboat the entire time since its rescue.

The tiger kills and eats the hyena, but does not immediately attack Pi. The young man manages to construct a raft using supplies aboard the boat, and avoids direct confrontation with Richard Parker by keeping out of the tiger's territory on the deck of the boat. He fishes and obtains fresh water using the equipment on board the boat and provides for both Richard Parker and himself in order to keep both of them alive. Later as they are close to death, the duo wash ashore upon a strange island formed of a tightly-knit edible algae. The island is populated solely by meerkats and contains pools of fresh water, but at night the algae that forms the island becomes dangerously acidic. After some time, Pi finds a strange tree on the island, and upon examining the tree's unusual "fruit", finds human teeth. He deduces that the 'island' is actually a massive plantlike organism that has consumed a human previously. Pi and Richard Parker soon leave. They later make it to Mexico, whereupon the tiger abruptly leaves Pi to go live