Zimbabwe cleric urges judges to be impartial. ., grows up near the Pondicherry Zoo, which his father has founded, owned and directed. Pi offers fascinating facts and insights into zoo animals, which become especially pertinent in the story's second part. In an arresting narrative voice Pi writes, "I was fourteen years old—and a contented Hindu—when I met Jesus Christ on a holiday." The boy ends up becoming not only a Christian but a Muslim as well, while remaining a Hindu. His three religious instructors meet with his parents to protest such audacity and soon get into an argument among themselves. Finally his father, who is not religious, says, "I suppose that's what we're all trying to do—love God." While this may sound simplistic and naive, it fits with two of the book's themes: that all life is interdependent, and that we live and breathe via belief. Elsewhere Pi claims atheists as "[his] brothers and sisters of a different faith. … they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them—and then they leap." The bulk of the book concerns the 227 days Pi spends adrift in the Pacific Ocean after the Japanese freighter carrying his family and many zoo animals sinks. He is the lone human survivor on a 26-foot lifeboat, which he shares with a wounded zebra, a spotted hyena, a seasick orangutan and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. Soon only Pi and the tiger remain, and Pi must find a way to survive not only hunger, the elements and shark-infested waters but also the constant fear that Richard Parker will make him his lunch. Martel carries off this section with aplomb. He combines dramatic episodes, scientific knowledge, well-written hallucinatory passages, humor and gruesome detail to move the story along. Since the entire book is told in flashback, we know how things will turn out, yet the suspense still grips us. The writing here is deceptively simple. Martel lets the winsome narrative voice and the intriguing plot carry us, all the while winking as he tosses out thoughts on the kinds of metaphysical questions humans have pondered for centuries. The story may not make us believe in God, but it certainly helps us enjoy asking whether we should. Cephas Mukandi

Christian Century, Feb 8, 2003

Methodist Bishop Cephas Mukandi, who heads his denomination in Zimbabwe, has implored judges and magistrates in the country to resist political pressure and "courageously shun selective justice" imposed by the governing party in that strife-torn African nation.

"We must shun selective justice that treats other children of God as second-class citizens," Mukandi told guests at the opening of the legal year at Zimbabwe's high court in Harare in mid-January.

The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and a United Nations human rights investigator have accused the governing Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) party of interfering with the judiciary and packing the Supreme Court with its sympathizers.

The government increased the number of Supreme Court justices from five to nine in 2001, although the bench fell back to five judges after the incumbent Chief Justice Antony Gubbay and Justices Nicholas McNally and Ali Ebrahim were pressured to resign. Another justice, Simbarashe Muchechetere, died in December of 2001.

Patrick Chinamasa, the minister of justice, legal and parliamentary affairs, had accused the three justices of serving the interests of white commercial farmers when they declared as illegal the government-backed farm invasions in early 2000 by veterans and supporters of Zimbabwe's 1970s liberation war. The minister said the government could no longer guarantee the justices' security.

War veterans have threatened Supreme Court justices and other judges, according to an ICJ 2002 report on justice in Zimbabwe, vowing to "use violence to oust from the bench the Supreme Court and certain judges of the high court."

In his remarks before the judges and magistrates, Mukandi also lamented the deteriorating economic situation in Zimbabwe, blaming it on the famine affecting the southern Africa region as well as the Robert Mugabe government's failure to restore the rule of law since the launch of the farm invasions. Economic stagnation has led to shortages of essential goods, impeded services and a thriving black market.

"A nation that was full of promise has now become a nation of long winding queues," Mukandi said. "Basic commodities have become scarce, and thousands of [Zimbabwe's] people are lix4ng on the verge of starvation. The once vibrant economy lies in ruins."--ENI