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Shantaram
Roberts, Gregory David

RRP
A$25.00

He was Australia's most wanted man. Now he's written Australia's most wanted novel.

Shantaram is a novel based on the life of the author, Gregory David Roberts. In 1978 Roberts was sentenced to nineteen years' imprisonment as punishment for a series of robberies of building-society branches, credit unions, and shops he had committed while addicted to heroin. In July 1980 he escaped from 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.

For most of this period he lived in Bombay. He set up a free health clinic in the slums, acted in Bollywood movies, worked for the Bombay mafia as a forger, counterfeiter, and smuggler and, as a gun-runner, resupplied a unit of mujaheddin guerrilla fighters in Afghanistan. This is the setting of Shantaram.

Apart from having this highly unusual personal background, Greg Roberts is a very gifted writer. His book is a blend of vivid dialogue, unforgettable characters, amazing adventures, and superb evocations of Indian life. It 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.

Author Information

Gregory David Roberts was born in Melbourne in 1952. After surviving the events dealt with in Shantaram, he was captured in Germany in 1990 and eventually extradited to Australia. After he completed his prison sentence, he established a small multi-media company, and is now a full-time writer. He lives in Melbourne.