I’ve heard good things about this book for ages, ever since it won the Booker Prize back in 2002, but for some reason I always resisted reading it. Perhaps it’s because I tend to prefer books that stay quite close to reality, and the premise of this one – a 16-year-old boy called Pi travels the Pacific in a lifeboat with a 450-pound Bengal tiger – sounded like the exact opposite. It’s a tall tale, almost deliberately unrealistic. Martel seems to take the absurdity of the premise as a challenge… Read More