Max, a sensitive German boy, grew up under his strict father, who always instilled fear and insecurity in him. Later, he becomes involved with Frida, wife of a Nazi soldier, forcing him to leave the country. In the middle of a sea voyage, a shipwreck forces him to share the small space of a boat with a giant jaguar, a feline that has always frightened him.
The book gained notoriety after the author, Moacyr Scliar, commented in a newspaper that the bestseller Life of Pi was partly a plagiarized version of his book Max and the Cats.
