McGill Reads: "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel

If you miss the insightful discussions of the classroom or just love to read, this is your chance to discover thought-provoking books and meet new people while learning from some of McGill’s favourite professors without tests, papers, or evaluations!

Yann Martel’s Life of Pi

Presented by Professor Ellen Aitken, Dean of McGill’s Faculty of Religious Studies.

Yann Martel's imaginative and unforgettable Life of Pi is a magical reading experience, a story quilt stitching together themes of adventure, survival and faith. The precocious son of a zookeeper, 16-year-old Pi Patel finds himself adrift in the Pacific Ocean, trapped on a 26-foot lifeboat with a wounded zebra, a spotted hyena, a seasick orangutan, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. After much struggle and carnage, Pi and Richard Parker remain the boat's sole passengers, drifting for 227 days through shark-infested waters while fighting hunger, the elements, and Pi’s overactive imagination. In rich, hallucinatory passages, Pi recounts the harrowing journey, elegantly cataloging the endless passage of time and his struggle to survive.

Winner of the Man Booker and Hugh McClennan Prizes for fiction, and short-listed for the Governor General’s Award, Yann Martel’s Life of Pi is a triumph of Canadian literature.

Professor Ellen Aitken is Dean of McGill’s Faculty of Religious Studies. She has been a member of the Faculty since 2004, teaching in the area of Early Christian History and Literature. Prior to coming to McGill, she was on the faculty of The Divinity School, Harvard University. She holds degrees from Harvard and the University of the South, with training in Folklore and Mythology, the Classics, and Religious Studies. She is the Chair of the Governing Board of McGill's Centre for Research on Religion (CREOR) and an honorary faculty member of the Montreal Diocesan Theological College. She was ordained in the Episcopal (Anglican) Church in 1986 and has been recognized widely as a leader in both scholarly and ecclesial communities. She has also received two awards for teaching excellence.

Cost: $15 CDN (includes 3 lectures; 10% off these books at McGill bookstore)