Contemporary Literary Criticism | Martel, Yann - Gerald T. Cobb (review date 14 April 2003)

Gerald T. Cobb (review date 14 April 2003)

SOURCE: Cobb, Gerald T. “Adolescent Mariner.” America 188, no. 13 (14 April 2003): 22.

[In the following review, Cobb views The Life of Pi as an extremely well-written and engrossing novel about religious faith and doubt.]

Yann Martel won Britain's most prestigious literary award, the Man Booker Prize, for Life of Pi, a book that reinvents the lost-at-sea novel in quite striking terms. Martel himself has been storm-tossed in a controversy about whether he inappropriately employed the premise of a 1981 story by Moacyr Scliar. In an “Author's Note” he credits the Brazilian author for “the spark of life,” but he insists that the novel itself is an original work. And what an ingenious text it is; readers will find Martel's novel gripping and unforgettable.

At a coffeehouse in Pondicherry, India, the author is approached by an elderly man who says, “I have a story...

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