It begins: '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. The opening of the book lets the reader know that he/she will be thinking about many philosophical issues during the book. There should be plenty of media interest in the book and its author, and its sheer heft will make it stand out in bookstores.Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts is a lengthly book, but very interesting reading. 18)įorecast: This is a novel with electric appeal, heightened by Roberts's exotic backstory (see q&a, p.

A sensational read, it might well reproduce its bestselling success in Australia here. If there are occasional passages that would make the very angels of purple prose weep, there are also images, plots, characters, philosophical dialogues and mysteries that more than compensate for the novel's flaws. Roberts, who wrote the first drafts of the novel in prison, has poured everything he knows into this book and it shows. There he learns about Karla's connection to Khader and discovers who set him up for arrest. Eventually, he follows Khader as an improbable guerrilla in the war against the Russians in Afghanistan.

Upon his release, he moves from the slum and begins laundering money and forging passports for one of the heads of the Bombay mafia, guru/sage Abdel Khader Khan. 'Linbaba's' life in the slum abruptly ends when he is arrested without charge and thrown into the hell of Arthur Road Prison.

Lin's love for Karla-and her mysterious inability to love in return-gives the book its central tension. The second person he meets is Karla, a beautiful Swiss-American woman with sea-green eyes and a circle of expatriate friends.

Through Prabaker, Lindsay learns Marathi (a language not often spoken by gora, or foreigners), gets to know village India and settles, for a time, in a vast shantytown, operating an illicit free clinic. One is a young tour guide, Prabaker, whose gifts include a large smile and an unstoppably joyful heart. On his first day there, Lindsay meets the two people who will largely influence his fate in the city. At the start of this massive, thrillingly undomesticated potboiler, a young Australian man bearing a false New Zealand passport that gives his name as 'Lindsay' flies to Bombay some time in the early '80s.

Shantaram novel review