Although just about everyone has already written rave reviews about this 2002 Booker Prize winner, I’m nevertheless going to boldly go where everyone has already been before and add my own gushing praise to this book.

Life of Pi is the amazing, surreal, unbelievable story of Pi, a young Indian boy who is named after a swimming pool, is raised in Goa with lions, giraffes, hippos and a whole catalog of zoo animals as his neighbors, becomes a practicing Hindu, Christian and Muslim, and then goes on a journey that changes his life forever – in the company of a zebra, hyena, orangutan and tiger.

At its core, this is a deeply religious book. Pi may be the main character of this novel, but quite often it seems like God isn’t far behind either. While most people would consider a child who has adopted all three religions to be confused and lost, Pi puts it best when he says, quite simply, "I just want to love God." It is this pure, focused love for God that saves him when he is put to the ultimate test, the test of survival. When facing grief and loss, he turns to God for comfort; when facing salvation and the rebirth of hope, he turns to God in gratitude. Despite his tremendous ordeal, Pi never loses faith - if anything, his faith becomes even stronger because of his harrowing experience. As he himself says, "The presence of God is the finest of rewards."

As I said before, this is a religious book in many ways, but instead of being heavy, is really as light as air, and therefore a very easy read. The story has all the right ingredients to appeal to most people - humour, faith, emotion, adventure, mystery - but more importantly, these ingredients have been mixed together in just the right amounts to create a true masterpiece of storytelling. Martel must surely have been the envy of every writer on the planet last year, not because he won the Booker Prize, but because he wrote this story. And what a story - as one of the characters puts it, it is a story that will make you believe in God.