Shantaram: A Novel
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“It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured.”
An escaped convict with a false passport, Lin flees maximum security prison in Australia for the teeming streets of Bombay, where he can disappear. Accompanied by his guide and faithful friend, Prabaker, the two enter the city’s hidden society of beggars and gangsters, prostitutes and holy men, soldiers and actors, and Indians and exiles from other countries, who seek in this remarkable place what they cannot find elsewhere.
As a hunted man without a home, family, or identity, Lin searches for love and meaning while running a clinic in one of the city’s poorest slums, and serving his apprenticeship in the dark arts of the Bombay mafia. The search leads him to war, prison torture, murder, and a series of enigmatic and bloody betrayals. The keys to unlock the mysteries and intrigues that bind Lin are held by two people. The first is Khader Khan: mafia godfather, criminal-philosopher-saint, and mentor to Lin in the underworld of the Golden City. The second is Karla: elusive, dangerous, and beautiful, whose passions are driven by secrets that torment her and yet give her a terrible power.
Burning slums and five-star hotels, romantic love and prison agonies, criminal wars and Bollywood films, spiritual gurus and mujaheddin guerrillas—this huge novel has the world of human experience in its reach, and a passionate love for India at its heart.
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Community Reviews
This is inspired storytelling by someone who values words, voices and experiences; the stuff that goes in making our lives cherishable. The narrative voice is reliable and the style original.
Thoroughly vivid and profound in parts, the story takes on hell of a journey, and I have to say that I find candid honesty in the voice as far as portrayal of India; the life in places, the values of people, strands of cultural fabric, if you will, human first, then Indian, Afghan, European or Australian, is concerned.
A page-turner as it is, the text renders equal justice in character build-up and the way the city breathes through the pages, you end up giving the author credit for seeing with a keen eye. I had to, initially, placate a concerned reader's voice inside me as to where it is going and the almost impossible gestural magnanimity being projected and displayed towards most things, most characters that the narrator ends up bumping in. But as the world of Lin opens up through the crevices of a city's underbelly as well as the whiff of its island-beauty, you find yourself excitedly taking a stroll with the characters. Eventually, it turns into an infectious and irresistible tale you don't want to take your mind's eyes off.
Having learned that the book is a part of a planned quartet, I would look forward to another book by Gregory Roberts. On of the many reasons why I liked the book is that irrespective of an overtly conscious effort to build upon literary styles much dominated by fashion, the tale unfolds and embraces without inhibitions. The reader starts, breathes and walks, takes a plunge, and is back. Home; enriched with words from some world.
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