Life of Pi Deluxe Illustrated Edition
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.” |
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars A Mirror Held Up to the Reader
Life of Pi was a fairly engaging story in terms of plot and character, but what made it such a memorable book, for me at least, was its thematic concerns. Basically, this is one of the most thematically interesting and thought-provoking books I’ve read in a while. Is it a “story that will make you believe in God,” as Pi claims? I’m not sure I’d go that far, but I would say that most people who enjoy thinking about the nature of reality and the possibility of God would find this a compelling read.
To me, the entire thrust of the book [SPOILER ALERT] is aimed at the idea that reality is a story, and therefore we can choose our own story (as the author himself put it). So if life is a story, that leaves us two basic choices: we can limit ourselves only to what we can know for sure - that is, to “dry, yeastless factuality” - or we can choose “the better story.” I suppose in Pi’s world the “better story” includes God, but he doesn’t suggest that this is the only meaningful possibility. In fact, Pi calls atheists his “brothers and sisters of a different faith,” because, like Pi, atheists “go as far as the legs of reason will carry them - and then they leap.”
Pi’s point, in my opinion, is that human experience always involves interpretation, that our knowledge is necessarily limited, that both religious belief and atheism require a leap of faith of one kind or another. It’s not that you must believe in God to be happy (even though Pi clearly finds peace in his beliefs); rather, the important thing is that you make a choice to bring meaning and richness to your life, that you look beyond pure, uninterpreted fact and find a better reality, that you exercise faith and strive for ideals (whatever the object of your faith and whatever those ideals might be ). Or as Pi himself puts it: “To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.”
In the end, I didn’t necessarily read this book as an invitation to believe in God, but rather as a mirror held up to the reader, a test to see what kind of world view the reader holds. [SPOILER ALERT] That is, as Pi himself says, since “it makes no factual difference to you and you can’t prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with the animals or the story without the animals?” Or, as I took it: Is it my nature to reach for and believe the better but less likely story? Or do I tend to believe the more likely but less lovely story? What view of reality do I generally adhere to?
Another equally important question is this: How did I come by my view of reality? Do I view the world primarily through the lens of reason? Or do I view it through the lens of emotion? For Pi, I think it’s safe to say his belief comes by way of emotion. He has, as one reviewer noted, a certain scepticism about reason (in fact, Pi calls it “fool’s gold for the bright”). Pi also has what I would call a subtle but real basis for his belief in God, namely, “an intellect confounded yet a trusting sense of presence and ultimate purpose.” But belief still isn’t easy for him. Despite his trusting sense of purpose, Pi acknowledges that “Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer.” So it’s not that a life of faith is easier, in Pi’s opinion, it’s that for him belief is ultimately more worthwhile.
This is not to say, however, that Pi holds a completely postmodern view of God or that he believes in God as a matter of art rather than in a sincere way. [SPOILER ALERT] True, Pi suggests that whether you believe his story has a tiger in it is also a reflection of your ability to believe in something higher. And of course it’s easy to read Pi’s entire story as an attempt to put an acceptable gloss on a horrific experience. Still…there are a number of clues throughout the book that, in my opinion, give the reader at least some reason to believe that Pi’s story DID have a tiger in it (for instance, the floating banana and the meerkat bones). As such, Pi’s two stories could be seen as an acknowledgement that both atheism and belief in God require some faith, and therefore it’s up to each of us to choose the way of life that makes us the happiest. He’s not necessarily saying that the truth is what you make it, he’s saying we don’t have unadulturated access to the truth: our imagination, personalities, and experiences unavoidably influence the way we interact with the world. But that’s not the same as saying whatever we imagine is true. I think Pi, for instance, knows which of his stories is true. It’s not Pi but the reader who is left with uncertainty and who therefore has to throw her hands up and say “I don’t know,” or else choose one story or the other. And to me, this isn’t too far off from the predicament we all find ourselves in.
[SPOILER ALERT] And that’s what makes Life of Pi such a challenge to the reader: Pi’s first story is fantastic, wonderful, but hard to believe. Yet there’s some evidence that it happened just the way he said it did. And Pi’s second story is brutal, terrible, but much easier to accept as true. Yet it’s not entirely plausible either, and it leaves no room for the meerkat bones or Pi’s “trusting sense of presence and ultimate purpose.” If the reader personally dismisses the tiger story out of hand, I suppose that’s another way of saying the reader, by nature, tends to believe the more likely but less lovely story. In the same way, if the reader gets to the story’s payoff and still believes there was a tiger in the boat, the reader is probably inclined to believe the more emotionally satisfying story. But it should be born in mind that Pi doesn’t definitively state which story was true, something which only he can know for sure. All we can really be sure of, in Pi’s universe, is that he was stuck on a lifeboat for a while before making it to shore. [SPOILER ALERT] So which story do I believe? I struggled with that question for a long time. But after thinking about it for a couple of days, I’ll end this review with the final lines from the book: “Very few castaways can claim to have survived so long at sea as Mr. Patel, and none in the company of an adult Bengal Tiger.”
5 Stars A Beautiful Life of Pi - it made me love re-reading it
It goes without saying that Life of Pi is my favorite book. Pi and Richard Parker won my heart years ago and I give this book away to everyone I know.
When I saw the illustrated version had been released, of course I immediately ordered it and was enthralled at the beautiful paintings and sketches that highlight certain elements of the story. It made re-reading it even more of a joy.
It was exactly as my mind had pictured it.
Beautiful edition and highly recommended.
5 Stars Beautiful collectors copy
I wanted this HC illustrated version for Christmas, but the local dealer sold out. I was soooo excited to see it discounted on Amazon.
I bought several copies for friends too!
4 Stars What a twist!!!!
This was a very original book. I really loved the ending, it made me want to read the book over again. I recommend this book to my friends often.
5 Stars Life of Pi
GREAT read- and this edition has amazing illustrations. Life of Pi is a fantastic story about a boy stranded at sea in the company of a Hyena, Orangutan, a Zebra, and a Bengal Tiger. Pi must learn to face these animals as well as himself. **awesomeness**
