Running to over 900 pages, Shantaram might be better suited to a seasonal or biannual book club than a monthly one. Despite being almost as long as the Bible, however, it never feels like a chore to read.
Gregory David Roberts was, at one time, Australia’s most wanted man. The book begins with his arrival in India in the early 1980s after he escaped from an Australian prison, having been incarcerated for a series of robberies. Still recovering from heroin addiction, he plans to travel to Europe after a short stop in Bombay. Circumstance intervenes, however, and he soon finds himself living in one of the city’s slums.
From there, he befriends locals, falls in love, establishes a health clinic for other residents of the slum, and finds himself mixed up once more in the world of crime.
It seems likely that many of the book’s key events are the product of a healthy dollop of artistic license; Roberts himself has stated that it’s a novel, rather than an autobiography. Factually accurate or not, though, it provides a stirring insight into parts of Indian culture that tourists never get to see.
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