My students can’t fathom why anyone would be interested in reading a 933-page book, much less attempt the feat. A couple of my friends (mostly of the graduate degree-seeking, male persuasion) hold an unhealthy, disdainful attitude toward all things fiction, so they, too, might not comprehend reading a novel at all, much less one two inches thick.
Hrmph. Good! More awesome stories for me.
I feel like I’m on Reading Rainbow right now, but I just finished what might be the best actual stories I’ve ever read. You know it’s a doozy when you have to start off the review with, “Well, the author himself is a former heroin addict who was sentenced to 19 years in a maximum security prison in Australia for a series of armed robberies but escaped over the front wall and lived in exile in Bombay for ten years, where he established a free medical clinic for slum-dwellers… as well as pursuing a few more nefarious careers.” Whew. I’m already tired.
The main character in Shantaram, whose real name we never find out, is, in many ways the doppelganger of the author, Gregory David Roberts (who, by the way, is the very definition of “badass”). Most of the time we know the protagonist as “Lin,” a nickname based on his false passport name Lindsay Ford. He makes a best friend in a smiley, lovable tour guide named Prabaker, falls in love with Karla, a cynical and mysterious Swiss-American beauty, and finds a much longed-for father figure in an Afghan mafia don named Abdel Khader Khan… All of whom fade out of his life in one way or another, but who teach him more about love than he ever imagined possible.
By the end of the novel, Shantaram (man of peace), as Lin is called by Prabaker’s family, has…
- learned both the Marathi and Hindi languages, plus enough Arabic, Quetta, and Pashto words to get by in a pinch
- saved an entire Bombay slum from a raging fire, a cholera outbreak, and monsoon season
- rescued a heroin-addicted American prostitute from an evil madame’s clutches
- been imprisoned unjustly and survived incredible human rights violations for four months in a Bombay prison
- mastered the inner workings of mafia operations, including passport/legal document forging and smuggling and black market money changing
- gone on a gunrunning mission for a group of muhajeddin fighters in Afghanistan
- established a casting agency for foreign extras in Bollywood movies
- saved a falsely accused performing circus bear from the Bombay police under the disguise of a Ganesh statue
…among other things.
I seriously could go on and on, but really, if you were interested enough to read this post, you’d just read the book. So maybe you should.
Oh! And I just found out there will be a sequel… AND a prequel! Man, I love a good trilogy. Mr. Roberts, you just made my day.
