Shantaram

About Book:

Shantaram is a novel based on the life of the author, Gregory David Roberts. In 1978 Roberts committed a series of armed 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, mesmerizing 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.

About Author:

Gregory David Roberts was born in Melbourne, and has lived in India, New Zealand, Germany, and Switzerland. He speaks four languages and has traveled widely in Asia, Africa and Europe. He is now a full-time writer and lives in Melbourne.