Life of Pi

In Canada, a young writer meets middle-aged Pi Patel. The writer has been told that Pi's life story would be a good subject for a book. Pi tells the writer the following story about his life:

Pi's father names him Piscine Molitor Patel after Piscine Molitor, a famous swimming pool in France. In secondary school in Pondicherry, he adopts the Greek letter "Pi" as his nickname to avoid bullying. He is raised in a Hindu family, but at 12 years old, he is introduced to Christianity and then Islam, and decides to follow all three religions as he "just wants to love God". His mother supports his desire to grow, but his rationalist father tries to secularize him. Pi's family owns a zoo, and Pi takes interest in the animals, especially a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. After Pi gets dangerously close to Richard Parker, his father forces him to witness the tiger killing a goat.