In the 1940s, a young Japanese woman--a pearl diver--is discovered to have leprosy and becomes an outcast, even though her case is extraordinarily mild, and is sent to the leper colony Nagashima. Because she is in good health, she becomes an assistant to the doctors there, spending the rest of her life as an exile, but a highly observant one.

Pi, the precocious animal-loving son of an Indian zookeeper, loses his family in a shipwreck en route to North America--and is left alone in a lifeboat with a man-eating Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, with whom he manages (thanks to his zoo background) to strike up an ingenious truce. When they finally reach land and the tiger disappears, Pi finds that no one will believe his story--and so he creates an alternative tale, one that is false but sounds true. This whimsical fantasy was short-listed for Canada's Governor General's Literary Award and won the Booker Prize in 2002. Also a New York Times Notable Book for 2002.