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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."
An award winner in Canada, Life of Pi, Yann Martel's second novel, should prove to be a breakout book in the U.S. 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. --Brad Thomas Parsons --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

内容简介

The Jungle Book meets Not Wanted On the Voyagein a triumph of storytelling and originality: a novel, as onecharacter puts it, to make you believe in God.
Piscine Molitor Patel, nicknamed Pi, lives in Pondicherry, India,where his family runs a zoo. Little Pi is a great reader. Hedevours books on Hinduism, Christianity and Islam, and to thesurprise of his secular parents, becomes devoted to all threereligions. When the parents decide to emigrate to Canada, thefamily boards a cargo ship with many of the animals that are goingto new zoological homes in North America, and bravely sets sail forthe New World.
Alas, the ship sinks. A solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on thesurface of the wild blue Pacific. In it are five survivors: Pi, ahyena, a zebra, an orang-utan and a 450-pound Royal Bengaltiger.
With intelligence, daring and inexpressible fear, Pi manages tokeep his wits about him as the animals begin to assert their placesin the foodchain; it is the tiger, Richard Parker, with whom hemust develop an inviolable understanding.

The Jungle Book meets Not Wanted On the Voyage
in a triumph of storytelling and originality: a novel, as one
character puts it, to make you believe in God. 
Piscine Molitor Patel, nicknamed Pi, lives in Pondicherry, India,
where his family runs a zoo. Little Pi is a great reader. He
devours books on Hinduism, Christianity and Islam, and to the
surprise of his secular parents, becomes devoted to all three
religions. When the parents decide to emigrate to Canada, the
family boards a cargo ship with many of the animals that are going
to new zoological homes in North America, and bravely sets sail for
the New World. 
Alas, the ship sinks. A solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the
surface of the wild blue Pacific. In it are five survivors: Pi, a
hyena, a zebra, an orang-utan and a 450-pound Royal Bengal
tiger. 
With intelligence, daring and inexpressible fear, Pi manages to
keep his wits about him as the animals begin to assert their places
in the foodchain; it is the tiger, Richard Parker, with whom he
must develop an inviolable understanding. 
Yann Martel’s Life of Pi is a transformative novel: a book
to delight in, to talk about and treasure. It will convince the
most jaded among us – and remind the rest – that something grander
is afoot in our lives than we may have realized. 
From the Hardcover edition.

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作者简介

Yann Martel was born in Spain in 1963. After studying philosophy at university, he worked odd jobs and traveled before turning to writing at the age of twenty-six. He is the author of the internationally acclaimed 2002 Man Booker Prize–winning novel Life of Pi, which was translated into thirty-eight languages and spent fifty-seven weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Yann Martel lives in Saskatchewan, Canada.
From the Hardcover edition.

在线试读部分章节

CHAPTER 1
My suffering left me sad and gloomy.
Academic study and the steady, mindful practice of religion slowlybrought me back to life. I have remained a faithful Hindu,Christian and Muslim. I decided to stay in Toronto. After one yearof high school, I attended the University of Toronto and took adouble-major Bachelor's degree. My majors were religious studiesand zoology. My fourth-year thesis for religious studies concernedcertain aspects of the cosmogony theory of Isaac Luria, the greatsixteenth-century Kabbalist from Safed. My zoology thesis was afunctional analysis of the thyroid gland of the three-toed sloth. Ichose the sloth because its demeanour-calm, quiet andintrospective-did something to soothe my shattered self.
There are two-toed sloths and there are three-toed sloths, the casebeing determined by the forepaws of the animals, since all slothshave three claws on their hind paws. I had the great luck onesummer of studying the three-toed sloth in situ in the equatorialjungles of Brazil. It is a highly intriguing creature. Its onlyreal habit is indolence. It sleeps or rests on average twenty hoursa day. Our team tested the sleep habits of five wild three-toedsloths by placing on their heads, in the early evening after theyhad fallen asleep, bright red plastic dishes filled with water. Wefound them still in place late the next morning, the water of thedishes swarming with insects. The sloth is at its busiest atsunset, using the word busy here in a most relaxed sense. It movesalong the bough of a tree in its characteristic upside-downposition at the speed of roughly 400 metres an hour. On the ground,it crawls to its next tree at the rate of 250 metres an hour, whenmotivated, which is 440 times slower than a motivated cheetah.Unmotivated, it covers four to five metres in an hour.

CHAPTER 1 
My suffering left me sad and gloomy. 
Academic study and the steady, mindful practice of religion slowly
brought me back to life. I have remained a faithful Hindu,
Christian and Muslim. I decided to stay in Toronto. After one year
of high school, I attended the University of Toronto and took a
double-major Bachelor's degree. My majors were religious studies
and zoology. My fourth-year thesis for religious studies concerned
certain aspects of the cosmogony theory of Isaac Luria, the great
sixteenth-century Kabbalist from Safed. My zoology thesis was a
functional analysis of the thyroid gland of the three-toed sloth. I
chose the sloth because its demeanour-calm, quiet and
introspective-did something to soothe my shattered self. 
There are two-toed sloths and there are three-toed sloths, the case
being determined by the forepaws of the animals, since all sloths
have three claws on their hind paws. I had the great luck one
summer of studying the three-toed sloth in situ in the equatorial
jungles of Brazil. It is a highly intriguing creature. Its only
real habit is indolence. It sleeps or rests on average twenty hours
a day. Our team tested the sleep habits of five wild three-toed
sloths by placing on their heads, in the early evening after they
had fallen asleep, bright red plastic dishes filled with water. We
found them still in place late the next morning, the water of the
dishes swarming with insects. The sloth is at its busiest at
sunset, using the word busy here in a most relaxed sense. It moves
along the bough of a tree in its characteristic upside-down
position at the speed of roughly 400 metres an hour. On the ground,
it crawls to its next tree at the rate of 250 metres an hour, when
motivated, which is 440 times slower than a motivated cheetah.
Unmotivated, it covers four to five metres in an hour. 
The three-toed sloth is not well informed about the outside world.
On a scale of 2 to 10, where 2 represents unusual dullness and 10
extreme acuity, Beebe (1926) gave the sloth's senses of taste,
touch, sight and hearing a rating of 2, and its sense of smell a
rating of 3. If you come upon a sleeping three-toed sloth in the
wild, two or three nudges should suffice to awaken it; it will then
look sleepily in every direction but yours. Why it should look
about is uncertain since the sloth sees everything in a Magoo-like
blur. As for hearing, the sloth is not so much deaf as uninterested
in sound. Beebe reported that firing guns next to sleeping or
feeding sloths elicited little reaction. And the sloth's slightly
better sense of smell should not be overestimated. They are said to
be able to sniff and avoid decayed branches, but Bullock (1968)
reported that sloths fall to the ground clinging to decayed
branches "often". 
How does it survive, you might ask. 
Precisely by being so slow. Sleepiness and slothfulness keep it out
of harm's way, away from the notice of jaguars, ocelots, harpy
eagles and anacondas. A sloth's hairs shelter an algae that is
brown during the dry season and green during the wet season, so the
animal blends in with the surrounding moss and foliage and looks
like a nest of white ants or of squirrels, or like nothing at all
but part of a tree. 
The three-toed sloth lives a peaceful, vegetarian life in perfect
harmony with its environment. "A good-natured smile is forever on
its lips," reported Tirler (1966). I have seen that smile with my
own eyes. I am not one given to projecting human traits and
emotions onto animals, but many a time during that month in Brazil,
looking up at sloths in repose, I felt I was in the presence of
upside-down yogis deep in meditation or hermits deep in prayer,
wise beings whose intense imaginative lives were beyond the reach
of my scientific probing. 
Sometimes I got my majors mixed up. A number of my fellow
religious-studies students-muddled agnostics who didn't know which
way was up, in the thrall of reason, that fool's gold for the
bright-reminded me of the three-toed sloth; and the three-toed
sloth, such a beautiful example of the miracle of life, reminded me
of God. 
I never had problems with my fellow scientists. Scientists are a
friendly, atheistic, hard-working, beer-drinking lot whose minds
are preoccupied with sex, chess and baseball when they are not
preoccupied with science. 
I was a very good student, if I may say so myself. I was tops at
St. Michael's College four years in a row. I got every possible
student award from the Department of Zoology. If I got none from
the Department of Religious Studies, it is simply because there are
no student awards in this department (the rewards of religious
study are not in mortal hands, we all know that). I would have
received the Governor General's Academic Medal, the University of
Toronto's highest undergraduate award, of which no small number of
illustrious Canadians have been recipients, were it not for a
beef-eating pink boy with a neck like a tree trunk and a
temperament of unbearable good cheer. 
I still smart a little at the slight. When you've suffered a great
deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.
My life is like a memento mori painting from European art: there is
always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of
human ambition. I mock this skull. I look at it and I say, "You've
got the wrong fellow. You may not believe in life, but I don't
believe in death. Move on!" The skull snickers and moves ever
closer, but that doesn't surprise me. The reason death sticks so
closely to life isn't biological necessity-it's envy. Life is so
beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous,
possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over
oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and
gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud. The pink boy also got
the nod from the Rhodes Scholarship committee. I love him and I
hope his time at Oxford was a rich experience. If Lakshmi, goddess
of wealth, one day favours me bountifully, Oxford is fifth on the
list of cities I would like to visit before I pass on, after Mecca,
Varanasi, Jerusalem and Paris. 
I have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a
noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if
he's not careful. 
I love Canada. I miss the heat of India, the food, the house
lizards on the walls, the musicals on the silver screen, the cows
wandering the streets, the crows cawing, even the talk of cricket
matches, but I love Canada. It is a great country much too cold for
good sense, inhabited by compassionate, intelligent people with bad
hairdos. Anyway, I have nothing to go home to in Pondicherry. 
Richard Parker has stayed with me. I've never forgotten him. Dare I
say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams.
They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with love. Such
is the strangeness of the human heart. I still cannot understand
how he could abandon me so unceremoniously, without any sort of
goodbye, without looking back even once. That pain is like an axe
that chops at my heart. The doctors and nurses at the hospital in
Mexico were incredibly kind to me. And the patients, too. Victims
of cancer or car accidents, once they heard my story, they hobbled
and wheeled over to see me, they and their families, though none of
them spoke English and I spoke no Spanish. They smiled at me, shook
my hand, patted me on the head, left gifts of food and clothing on
my bed. They moved me to uncontrollable fits of laughing and
crying. 
Within a couple of days I could stand, even make two, three steps,
despite nausea, dizziness and general weakness. Blood tests
revealed that I was anemic, and that my level of sodium was very
high and my potassium low. My body retained fluids and my legs
swelled up tremendously. I looked as if I had been grafted with a
pair of elephant legs. My urine was a deep, dark yellow going on to
brown. After a week or so, I could walk just about normally and I
could wear shoes if I didn't lace them up. My skin healed, though I
still have scars on my shoulders and back. The first time I turned
a tap on, its noisy, wasteful, superabundant gush was such a shock
that I became incoherent and my legs collapsed beneath me and I
fainted in the arms of a nurse. 
The first time I went to an Indian restaurant in Canada I used my
fingers. The waiter looked at me critically and said, "Fresh off
the boat, are you?" I blanched. My fingers, which a second before
had been taste buds savouring the food a little ahead of my mouth,
became dirty under his gaze. They froze like criminals caught in
the act. I didn't dare lick them. I wiped them guiltily on my
napkin. He had no idea how deeply those words wounded me. They were
like nails being driven into my flesh. I picked up the knife and
fork. I had hardly ever used such instruments. My hands trembled.
My sambar lost its taste. 
Copyright © 2001 by Yann Martel All rights reserved. No
part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publisher. 
Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work
should be mailed to the following address: Permissions Department,
Harcourt, Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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