First Year Reading Initiative: Crossing Boundaries
This year's selection is the Life of Pi by Canadian author Yann Martel. Published in 2002, and the winner of that year's Man Booker Prize, the Life of Pi tells the story of a young Indian boy trapped on a lifeboat with a zebra, a hyena, an orangutang and a 450-pound Bengal tiger.
There will also be a lecture by Dr. Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, on "The Transformative Power of Literature and the Power of the Imagination."
Provided below are some resources to find out more about the Life of Pi, Reading Lolita in Tehran, and the authors. Items marked with the red lock 
are restricted to IC users--you must either be on campus or have an IC email address and password to view these articles.
Reviews: Life of Pi
- Robinson Crusoe, move over (The Nation)
- Taming the Tiger (New York Times Book Review) (.pdf)
- The Man, or the Tiger (New York Review of Books) (.pdf)
Scholarly Articles
- Believing in Tigers : Anthropomorphism and Incredulity in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi. (.pdf)
- Hollow at the Core : Deconstructing Yann Martel's Life of Pi (.pdf)
Reading Group Guide
- Reading Group Guide (.pdf)
Copyright 2001 by Yann Martel, reproduced by permission of Harcourt, Inc. This material may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Yann Martel
- Biography and Additional Information from the British Arts Council's "Contemporary Writers"
- Biography and Short Interview from Barnesandnoble.com
- "The empathetic imagination": An interview with Yann Martel
- NPR Interview with Yann Martel
- Biography Resource Center on Yann Martel
- How I Wrote Life of Pi by Yann Martel (from Powells.com)
Azar Nafisi
- Excerpt from Reading Lolita in Tehran (from Middle East Quarterly)
- The Republic of the Imagination (from Washington Post Book Review)
- Biographical Sketch (from Biography Resource Center)
Azar Nafisi: Bibliography
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
Find in Library | Buy at Amazon.com
My Sister, Guard Your Veil; My Brother, Guard Your Eyes: Uncensored Iranian Voices, edited by Lila Azam Zanganeh, with a contributing chapter by Azar Nafisi
Buy at Amazon.com
Hadji Murad by Leo Tolstoy, with an introduction by Azar Nafisi
Buy at Amazon.com
Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings, translated by Dick Davis, with an introduction by Azar Nafisi
Buy at Amazon.com
My Uncle Napoleon by Iraj Pezeshkzad, with an introduction by Azar Nafisi
Buy at Amazon.com
In the Eye of the Storm: Women in Post-Revolutionary Iran, edited by Mahnaz Afkhami and Erika Friedl, with a contributing chapter by Azar Nafisi
Buy at Amazon.com
Religious Fundamentalism and the Human Rights of Women, edited by Courtney W. Howland, with a contributing chapter by Azar Nafisi
Find in Library | Buy at Amazon.com
Muslim Women and the Politics of Participation: Implementing the Beijing Platform, edited by Mahnaz Afkhami and Erika Friedl, with a contributing chapter by Azar Nafisi
Find in Library | Buy at Amazon.com
