Life of Pi

Yann Martel was born in Spain in 1963 of Canadian parents. Life of Pi won the 2002 Man Booker Prize and has been translated into more than forty languages. A #1 New York Times bestseller, it spent eighty-seven weeks on the list and was adapted to the screen by Ang Lee. He is also the author of the novels Beatrice and Virgil and Self, the collection of stories The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, and a collection of letters to the prime minister of Canada, 101 Letters to a Prime Minister. He lives in Saskatchewan, Canada.BiographySometime in the early 1990s, Yann Martel stumbled across a critique in The New York Times Review of Books by John Updike that captured his curiosity. Although Updike's response to Moacyr Scliar's Max and the Cats was fairly icy and indifferent, the premise immediately intrigued Martel. According to Martel, Max and the Cats was, "as far as I can remember... about a zoo in Berlin run by a Jewish family. The year is 1933 and, not surprisingly, business is bad. The family decides to emigrate to Brazil. Alas, the ship sinks and one lone Jew ends up in a lifeboat with a black panther." Whether or not the story was as uninspiring as Updike had indicated in his review, Martel was both fascinated by this premise and frustrated that he had not come up with it himself.Ironically, Martel's account of the plot of Max and the Cats wasn't completely accurate. In fact, in Scliar's novel, Max Schmidt did not belong to a family of zookeepers -- he was the son of furrier. Furthermore, he did not emigrate from Berlin to Brazil with his family as the result of a failing zoo, but was forced to flee Hamburg after his lover's husband sells him out to the Nazi secret police. So, this plot that so enthralled Martel -- which he did not pursue for several years because he assumed Moacyr Scliar had already tackled it -- was more his own than he had thought.Meanwhile, Martel managed to write and publish two books: a collection of short stories titled The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios in 1993 and a novel about gender confusion called Self in 1996. Both books sold only moderately well, further frustrating the writer. In an effort to collect his thoughts and refresh his creativity, he took a trip to India, first spending time in bustling Bombay. However, the overcrowded city only furthered Martel's feelings of alienation and dissolution. He then decided to move on to Matheran, a section near Bombay but without that city's dense population. In this peaceful hill station overlooking the city, Martel began revisiting an idea he had not considered in some time, the premise he had unwittingly created when reading Updike's review in The New York Times Review of Books. He developed the idea even further away from Max and the Cats. While Scliar's novel was an extended holocaust allegory, Martel envisioned his story as a witty, whimsical, and mysterious meditation on zoology and theology. Unlike Max Schmidt, Pi Patel would, indeed, be the son of a zookeeper. Martel would, however, retain the shipwrecked-with-beasts theme from Max and the Cats. During an ocean exodus from India to Canada, the ship sinks and Pi finds himself stranded on a lifeboat with such unlikely shipmates as a zebra, a hyena, and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.The resulting novel, Life of Pi, became the smash-hit for which Martel had been longing. Selling well over a million copies and receiving the accolades of Book Magazine, Publisher's Weekly, Library Journal, and, yes, The New York Times Review of Books, Life of Pi has been published in over 40 countries and territories, in over 30 languages. It is currently in production by Fox Studios with a script by master-of-whimsy Jean-Pierre Jeunet (City of Lost Children; Amélie) and directorial duties to be handled by Alfonso Cuarón (Y tu mamá también; Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban).Martel is now working on his third novel, a bizarrely allegorical adventure about a donkey and a monkey that travel through a fantastical world... on a shirt. Well, at least no one will ever accuse him of borrowing that premise from any other writer.

出版者:Mariner Books

作者:[英] Yann Martel

页数:336

出版时间:2012-10-2

价格:USD 15.95

装帧:Paperback

isbn号码:9780547848419

图书标签:EnglishOriginal美国文学小说书籍★YannMartelEnglish

MORE THAN SEVEN MILLION COPIES SOLD

New York Times Bestseller

• Los Angeles Times Bestseller

• Washington Post Bestseller

• San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller

• Chicago Tribune Bestseller

"A story to make you believe in the soul-sustaining power of fiction."—Los Angeles Times Book Review

After the sinking of a cargo ship, a solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck are a sixteen-year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a wounded zebra, an orangutan—and a 450-pound royal bengal tiger. The scene is set for one of the most extraordinary and beloved works of fiction in recent years.

Universally acclaimed upon publication, Life of Pi is a modern classic.

Winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize

读后感

王小波说小说首先应当有趣，“大家在小说中看到的应该是有趣本身”，真是说到我的心坎里去了。可惜，在他不幸的英年早逝之后，有趣的中文小说也再见不到了。我郁闷了许久，郁闷到我的英文粗通，可以不怎么结巴的看完一本小说为止。我记得我看的第一本英文小说是《the Catcher i...  

1、这是一个16岁男孩和一只成年孟加拉虎在一艘救生船上共同漂流227天的奇幻故事。书的封皮上说：这是一个能让你产生信仰的故事。我没能产生信仰，但产生思索。 2、这本小说严重教训了我不喜欢先看作者序言的臭毛病！不先看序就会为我的阅读乐趣交上一大笔时间的学费！ 3、结构...  

若不是因为布克奖的缘故，我很可能会将之当成一本讲圆周率的数学普及读本而不幸错过。然而圆周率也未尝同整本小说没有关联，Yann Martel在一篇采访中说：“我选择Pi这个名字，是因为这是个不理性(irrational)的数字，然而科学家们还是利用这个不理性的数字达成对宇宙的理性认...  

1，为什么说这是一个能让你相信上帝的故事？ 相信有动物的那个故事，和相信上帝，在本质上是一个道理的。 相信上帝并不是因为有确切的证据证明上帝的存在，而是在事实并没有支持，事实甚至在反对这种信念的时候（日心说，演化论及其他）仍然相信，不然这就不是信仰，...  

"Life of Pi" is just a fun read with quite a few memorable details, but on the whole the author is still immature as a writer in that, he tries too hard to mask the "truth" with gimmicks in story-telling, and he loses sight of the real depth of the truth, a...  

用户评价

前半段动物园大段景物描写确实有点无聊，尤其飞机上看的时候困的要死，常年看的都是硬通货，读小说的耐心真是越来越少。

"And so it goes with God."

"And so it goes with God."

前半段动物园大段景物描写确实有点无聊，尤其飞机上看的时候困的要死，常年看的都是硬通货，读小说的耐心真是越来越少。

它一定要感謝李安借化想象為現實畫面的能力給它 不然它就是本拿TREEEEE!TREEEEE!TREEEEE!刷你一臉的書