By Ben Feltham.

I read The Life of Pi some years ago. OK, I heard it on an audio book, same thing. Anyway if you read… erm, heard the book, like me you might have finished it with the same sense of enigmatic wonder.

The book takes you threw a dramatic story of how a boy survived for weeks at sea in a boat with a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and, most fancifully, a tiger for company; then at the end of the book the narrator offers a very different, much darker explanation of his time at sea. Both of these narratives are offered as completely true, and deftly, both as plausible as the other, and it is for the reader (listener, whatever) to decide which version they believe. That notion of enigmatic wonder comes from knowing that there is something profound being said, but you’re not quite sure what.

This article is for Subscribers only.

[ttt-subscribe-article]