The Life of Pi is a novel published in 2001. The novel begins with a note from the author, which is an integral part of the story. Unusually, the note describes entirely fictional events. It serves to establish and enforce one of the book's main themes: the relativity of truth. It afterwards continues to tell the story from two different viewpoints.
The narrator explains how he first heard of the story and started to find out more information and the story behind it. His chapters can be recognised by italic fonts.
The first section gives us more background about his childhood in India. We get to know his family and their main business which is running a Zoo in Pondicherry. A special focus is on the fact that he connects to the three big religions: Hindu, Christianity and Islam. He finds important parts in all of them and despite stressful situations in his family continues to follow them. During the Emergency the family decides to migrate to Canada.
Part two follows at the beginning the shipping on the Tsimtsum, a Japanese freighter that sinks in a storm. He can rescue himself in a lifeboat, only to find himself together with a Zebra, an Orangutan and a Hyena. Later he finds out, that also Richard Parker made it to the boat. Richard Parker is a 450-pound Bengal Tiger, who will be his company for the rest of the journey. His journey takes him 227 days and it is described how he managed to stay alive and condition Richard Parker in the meantime.
The final part concentrates on the time after they finally arrived in Mexico and how two representatives from the Japanese Ministry of Transport interrogate him about his story. He tells them two versions of his days at sea. One follows the storyline of part two, whereas the other describes it without animals. His final words after their judgement of them are "And so it goes with God". Everybody who read the book or watched the movie, can make their own decision about which story they want to believe. I won't spoil it here.
One scene made a permanent impression on me. It describes how Piscine Molitor Patel wanted to get rid of his rude nicknames (I won't echo them here) from primary school. So on the first day at secondary school he had the guts to stand up and connect his name to Pi by reciting the first 10 digits of Pi in every class he was going. As you embark on the journey of solving this cache, you will hopefully encounter some surprising elements. Let's start with this scene for our little adventure.
This cache was beta tested by NYWanderer and I want to say thanks for the effort and the feedback I received.