Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Martel, Yann - Linda M. Morra (review date summer 2003)

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Linda M. Morra (review date summer 2003)

SOURCE: Morra, Linda M. “Re-Visioning Crusoe.” Canadian Literature 177 (summer 2003): 163-64.

[In the following review, Morra compares Martel's The Life of Pi with Daniel DeFoe's eighteenth-century novel Robinson Crusoe.]

The tripartite structure of Life of Pi, Yann Martel's second novel and winner of the 2002 Booker Prize, corresponds to three major periods of the protagonist's life: his adult life in Canada where he meets the narrator and divulges his life-story; his childhood in India followed by a traumatic experience at sea; and his rescue and recovery in Mexico. Initially, some cursory narrative details of the second and third of these parts suggest parallels with Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Pi—whose equally resonant birth name, Piscine Molitor, is derived from the “crowning aquatic glory of Paris”—is lost at sea after a shipwreck. Like Crusoe, he survives...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Cary Fagan (review date April 1993)
   2. Merna Summers (review date June 1993)
   3. A. C. (review date 27 May 1994)
   4. Greg Hollingshead (review date April 1996)
   5. Christine Hamelin (review date November 1996)
   6. Julian Ferraro (review date 22 November 1996)
   7. Nathan Whitlock (review date August 2001)
   8. Francis King (review date 18 May 2002)
   9. Francie Lin (review date 16 June 2002)
   10. Roz Kaveney (review date 19 July 2002)
   11. William Skidelsky (review date 29 July 2002)
   12. Charlotte Innes (review date 19 August 2002)
   13. Yann Martel and Sabine Sielke (interview date 2002)
   14. Gordon Houser (review date 8 February 2003)
   15. Pankaj Mishra (review date 27 March 2003)
   16. Elizabeth Palmberg (review date March-April 2003)
   17. Gerald T. Cobb (review date 14 April 2003)
   18. Randy Boyagoda (review date May 2003)
   19. Jean Smith (review date spring 2003)
   20. Linda M. Morra (review date summer 2003)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Yann Martel