Of course all of the background information, Pi's childhood in India, and the times we meet him as an adult in Toronto, are only preparatory for the main event, his sojourn aboard the life boat with an adult Bengal Tiger named Richard Parker. His family had decided to emigrate from India to Canada, and in order to pay their way had sold the majority of the zoo's animals to the United States. Therefore, instead of flying like most immigrants, they take a tramp steamer to shepherd them to their new homes. It's during this voyage that the shipwreck happens, leaving Pi alone aboard a life boat with a zebra, an orangutang, a hyena, and the aforementioned tiger.

The natural order exerts itself upon the life boat over the first few days as the hyena dispatches the zebra and the orangutang while Pi can only hope he continues to ignore him. It's only when Richard Parker recovers from his seasickness that Pi realizes that it has been the tiger's presence that has kept him safe from attack. Of course that doesn't prevent him from being terrified of his protector, and his struggle to figure out a way in which the two of them can survive in harmony is the crux of the story for the balance of their voyage together.

Life Of Pi was originally published in 2002 and received all sorts of critical accolades, including being awarded the Mann Booker Prize. Now in 2007 Random House Canada through its Alfred A. Knoff imprint has published a lavishly illustrated new edition with beautiful full-page colour plates by Croatian artist Tomislav Torjanic. To select an illustrator for the book, an international competition was held, and out of the thousands of artists who entered Torjanic's work was judged best suited to the needs of the book.

Not having seen any of the other entrants there's not much basis for comparison, but to be honest I can't see how anyone could have done a better job than Torjanic. His work has the lushness of Paul Gauguin's paintings of Fiji, making it ideal for capturing the richness and vibrancy of the South Pacific locations that predominate in the book, combined with an illustrator's capacity for capturing a moment in a story and reproducing it with the accuracy of capturing a frame in a film.

What I found especially rewarding about Tomislav's work was the fact that the illustrations, no matter the size, were always drawn from Pi's perspective of events (The temptation to say Pi -eyed view is too great to resist, I'm sorry) reinforcing the fact that this is his story, while making it easier for the reader to understand what he is experiencing. Of course this also serves to draw us into the story, because when we look at the pictures, we become the object of the subject matter's focus as much as they are ours. So, when the perspective of an illustration has us looking down the length of the lifeboat at the back of a 450 pound Bengal tiger, and his head is turned to look over his shoulder, his one eye stares back at us, not some unknown target.