Post by Tiberius on Dec 19, 2003 20:03:51 GMT 10
I've been meaning to mention this book ever since I read it a few months ago. It's a brilliant book. It's called Shantaram and it's by Gregory David Roberts.
He was a former Melbourne philosophy uni student who got addicted to heroin and took up bank robbing to fund his addiction. But he got caught eventually and was sent to a maximum security prison from which he escaped. With the help of outlaw bikie gangs he escaped to New Zealand where he took on different aliases while trying to get enough money to escape to Europe. When he had enough, he took a plane to Europe that had a stopover in India. He lived there for the next six years and got involved with the Bombay mafia, became a medic helping children in the slums, and got himself caught up in various historical events at the time.
It's a fascinating read and it's not like Chopper's books about his life of crime which seem more to be a boastful brag. Instead, this is more of a story about someone looking for redemption and trying work out who he is in the process. His philosophical academic roots are obvious in the book as he looks at the things that happened to him and the things he did, with a questioning mind.
I’ll quote the blurb on the book:
Shantaram is a novel based on the life of author, Gregory David Roberts. In 1978 Roberts committed a series of robberies while addicted to heroin, and was sentenced to nineteen years' imprisonment. In July 1980 he escaped over the front wall of Victoria's maximum-security prison, in broad daylight, thereby becoming one of Australia's most wanted men for what turned out to be the next ten years.
His journey took him to New Zealand, Asia, Africa, and Europe, but his home for most of those years was Bombay -- where he established a free medical clinic for slum-dwellers, and worked as a counterfeiter, smuggler, gunrunner, and street soldier for one of the most charismatic branches of the Bombay mafia.
Shantaram deals with all this, and more. It is an epic, mesmerising tale of crowded slums and five-star hotels, romantic love and prison torture, mafia gang wars and Bollywood films, and spiritual gurus and brutal battlefields. It weaves a seamless web of unforgettable characters, amazing adventures, and superb evocations of Indian life.
This remarkable book can be read as a vast, extended thriller, as well as a superbly written meditation on the nature of good and evil. It is a compelling tale of a hunted man who had lost everything -- his home, his family, and his soul -- and came to find his humanity while living at the wildest edge of experience. Nothing like this has been written before, and nobody but Greg Roberts could have written it now.
Reviews:
Shantaram, by first-time novelist Gregory David Roberts, was published on 11 August, and has since been reprinted twice.
Most reviews have been highly favourable. Cameron Woodhead in The Age hailed Shantaram as 'a masterpiece'. Rodney Beecham in Australian Book Review called it 'a great book'. Christopher Bantick, writing in The Weekly Times, said he'd been left stunned by this 'big and compelling book' that was an ' "un-put-down-able" page turner by a master storyteller. ’ And Malcolm Knox, the Sydney Morning Herald's literary editor, has written of the author making 'an immense impact with Shantaram.
He was a former Melbourne philosophy uni student who got addicted to heroin and took up bank robbing to fund his addiction. But he got caught eventually and was sent to a maximum security prison from which he escaped. With the help of outlaw bikie gangs he escaped to New Zealand where he took on different aliases while trying to get enough money to escape to Europe. When he had enough, he took a plane to Europe that had a stopover in India. He lived there for the next six years and got involved with the Bombay mafia, became a medic helping children in the slums, and got himself caught up in various historical events at the time.
It's a fascinating read and it's not like Chopper's books about his life of crime which seem more to be a boastful brag. Instead, this is more of a story about someone looking for redemption and trying work out who he is in the process. His philosophical academic roots are obvious in the book as he looks at the things that happened to him and the things he did, with a questioning mind.
I’ll quote the blurb on the book:
Shantaram is a novel based on the life of author, Gregory David Roberts. In 1978 Roberts committed a series of robberies while addicted to heroin, and was sentenced to nineteen years' imprisonment. In July 1980 he escaped over the front wall of Victoria's maximum-security prison, in broad daylight, thereby becoming one of Australia's most wanted men for what turned out to be the next ten years.
His journey took him to New Zealand, Asia, Africa, and Europe, but his home for most of those years was Bombay -- where he established a free medical clinic for slum-dwellers, and worked as a counterfeiter, smuggler, gunrunner, and street soldier for one of the most charismatic branches of the Bombay mafia.
Shantaram deals with all this, and more. It is an epic, mesmerising tale of crowded slums and five-star hotels, romantic love and prison torture, mafia gang wars and Bollywood films, and spiritual gurus and brutal battlefields. It weaves a seamless web of unforgettable characters, amazing adventures, and superb evocations of Indian life.
This remarkable book can be read as a vast, extended thriller, as well as a superbly written meditation on the nature of good and evil. It is a compelling tale of a hunted man who had lost everything -- his home, his family, and his soul -- and came to find his humanity while living at the wildest edge of experience. Nothing like this has been written before, and nobody but Greg Roberts could have written it now.
Reviews:
Shantaram, by first-time novelist Gregory David Roberts, was published on 11 August, and has since been reprinted twice.
Most reviews have been highly favourable. Cameron Woodhead in The Age hailed Shantaram as 'a masterpiece'. Rodney Beecham in Australian Book Review called it 'a great book'. Christopher Bantick, writing in The Weekly Times, said he'd been left stunned by this 'big and compelling book' that was an ' "un-put-down-able" page turner by a master storyteller. ’ And Malcolm Knox, the Sydney Morning Herald's literary editor, has written of the author making 'an immense impact with Shantaram.
