Life of Pi sort of with a capital 'S' – something that would direct my life." He spoke of being lonely and needing direction in his life, and found that writing the novel met this need. The name of Martel's tiger, Richard Parker, was inspired by a character in Edgar Allan Poe's nautical adventure novel "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket" (1838). In this book, Richard Parker is a mutineer who is stranded and eventually cannibalized on the hull of an overturned ship (and there is a dog aboard who is named Tiger). The author also had in mind another occurrence
The Bottom of the Bottle (novel) The Bottom of the Bottle (novel) The Bottom of the Bottle is a novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon. The original French version "Le Fond de la Bouteille", written in 1948 when Simenon was living in Arizona, appeared in 1949. The novel is among his "romans durs", a term roughly translated as hard, or harrowing, novels; it was used by Simenon for what he regarded as his serious literary works. The story is set in Arizona near the Mexican border: a rancher's life is disrupted by the appearance of his brother, who has escaped from jail and is determined