Pi

Pi's family decides to relocate to Canada. His father sells many of the animals from the zoo, but selects some to move with them to Winnipeg by freighter. The ship capsizes in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, leaving Pi an orphan, alone on a lifeboat with a hyena, a zebra, and an enormous Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. In short order, the hyena dispatches the zebra, the tiger dispatches the hyena, and for all intents and purposes, Pi appears to be the next item on Richard Parker's menu.

What happens for the next 227 days at sea is nothing short of amazing. Rejecting the idea of killing the only companion (albeit a dangerous one) he has in the middle of shark-infested waters with waning prospects for rescue, Pi devises ways to care for both his own needs and the tiger's in an ongoing survival situation of the most dire proportions. In the process, he calls upon everything he has learned, both in a practical sense and a spiritual one, to keep himself and Richard Parker alive against overwhelming odds.