Saturday, April 19, 2008

Life of Pi

For starters, ‘Life of Pi’ is a book that won Man Booker prize in 2002. It grabbed a lot of attention in India for mainly two reasons: the book’s protagonist is an Indian and the story is about survival which Indians quite easily relate to. The protagonist Pi is a devout and follows all religions that are prominent in India viz., Hinduism, Islam, Christanity. The story mainly deals with his survival on a lifeboat along with a Bengal tiger for some 270 days. Being a son of Zoo manager, he explains some interesting facts about Zoo, animals and how to tame them.

The book is a good fictional read, but I couldn’t actually connect to the character and his survival story. The writing is just above average and Yann Martel didn’t impress me as an expert writer of make-believe stories. The story is a good change from other fictional stories that we get to read from our mainstream writers. However reader should not consider Pi as a stereotype Indian, Pi is young, naïve and over-zealous follower of religion. The part that I hate about the books with Indian protagonists is that they take the characters over the roof and end up showcasing them as naïve. And sadly that seems to grab the attention of western world and the books end up winning prizes across the globe.

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