The Most Addictive Books of the Last 25 Years

Because we can't resist a didn't-see-it-coming spiritual punch.

An Indian man named "Pi" recalls the 227 days he spent adrift on the Pacific Ocean as a boy, following a shipwreck that killed his parents. The only other survivors in the lifeboat were a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan and tiger named Richard Parker—maybe. The novel asked us to think how we endure tragedy, who we become in its wake and how, within it, we may just find both the terrifying and the miraculous.