The book is composed of four short stories. The 2004 Canongate Books edition is updated with an author's note in which Martel writes that he is "happy to offer these four stories again to the reading public, slightly revised, the youthful urge to overstate reined in, the occasional clumsiness in prose, I hope, ironed out." All the stories except "Manners of Dying" have a distinct auto-biographical feel to them, the protagonist being a young white male university student having an existential crisis. In these stories, especially the first two, references to other cultural noteworthies such as "The Little Prince" and "Almayer's Folly" are noticeable. Most of the themes explored in these more youthful works are employed in the inner workings of the "Life of Pi".