Shantaram
Where to buy Shantaram books online?
- ISBN13: 9780786174652
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
“It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about like 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.”
So starts this epic, mesmerizing first novel set in the underworld of contemporary Bombay. Shantaram is narrated by Lin, an escaped convict with a fake passport who flees maximum security prison in Australia for the teeming streets of a city where he can disappear.
Accompanied by his guide and faithful friend, Prabaker, the two enter Bombay’s hidden society of beggars and gangsters, prostitutes and holy men, soldiers and actors, and Indians and exiles from additional countries, who seek in this remarkable place what they cannot find elsewhere.
As a hunted man lacking a home, family tree, or identity, Lin searches for like and meaning while running a clinic in one of the city’s poorest slums, and serving his apprenticeship in the dark arts of the Bombay mafia. The search leads him to war, prison torture, murder, and a series of enigmatic and bloody betrayals. The keys to unlock the mysteries and intrigues that bind Lin are held by two people. The first is Khader Khan: mafia godfather, criminal-philosopher-saint, and mentor to Lin in the underworld of the Golden City. The second is Karla: elusive, treacherous, and gorgeous, whose passions are driven by secrets that torment her and yet give her a terrible power.
Burning slums and five-star hotels, romantic like and prison agonies, criminal wars and Bollywood films, spiritual gurus and mujaheddin guerrillas—this huge novel has the world of human experience in its reach, and a passionate like for India at its heart. Based on the life of the leader, it is by any measure the debut of an extraordinary voice in literature.
Amazon.com Review
Crime and punishment, passion and loyalty, treachery and redemption are only a few of the ingredients in Shantaram, a massive, over-the-top, mostly autobiographical novel. Shantaram is the name agreed Mr. Lindsay, or Linbaba, the larger-than-life hero. It means “man of God’s peace,” which is what the Indian people know of Lin. What they do not know is that prior to his arrival in Bombay he escaped from an Australian prison where he had begun serving a 19-year sentence. He served two years and leaped over the wall. He was imprisoned for a string of armed robberies peformed to support his heroin addiction, which ongoing when his marriage fell apart and he lost custody of his daughter. All of that is enough for several lifetimes, but for Greg Roberts, that’s only the beginning.
He arrives in Bombay with small money, an assumed name, fake papers, an untellable past, and no plans for the future. Fortunately, he meets Prabaker straight away, a sweet, smiling man who is a street guide. He takes to Lin immediately, eventually introducing him to his home village, where they end up living for six months. When they return to Bombay, they take up residence in a sprawling illegal slum of 25,000 people and Linbaba becomes the resident “doctor.” With a prison knowledge of first aid and whatever medicines he can cadge from doing trades with the local Mafia, he sets up a practice and is regarded as heaven-sent by these poor people who have nothing but illness, rat bites, dysentery, and anemia. He also meets Karla, an enigmatic Swiss-American woman, with whom he falls in like. Theirs is a intricate relationship, and Karla’s relations are murky from the outset.
Roberts is not reluctant to wax poetic; in fact, some of his prose is downright embarrassing. Throughought the novel, but, all 944 pages of it, every single sentence rings right. He is a tough guy with a tender heart, one capable of what is judged criminal behavior, but a basically decent, intelligent man who would never intentionally hurt anyone, especially anyone he knew. He is a magnet for distress, a soldier of chance, a picaresque hero: the rascal who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. His tale is irresistible. Stay tuned for the prequel and the sequel. –Valerie Ryan
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The leader “escaped from an Australian prison where he had begun serving a 19-year sentence”. 19 years!? He must have really been a terrible dude.
He’s made enough money now, with a movie speech coming, and that’s enough. If you insist on buying this prolix tome, buy the book used so the leader makes nothing off the royalty. Otherwise you’re promoting crime.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Everyone should google this leader before spending money on his work. I did and establish out that he is a lifetime career criminal. This guy ongoing out as a heroin addicted robber in his native country, broke out of prison. During a life on the run, he was recruited by the mafia, doing currency crime, passport forgery, drug smuggling and gunning operation in Nigeria, Zaire, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan..etc. He was imprisoned in several countries. Finally after being jailed in Germany with terrorists, he was send back to his country.
His decades long activities deeply affect so many people in so many countries. Please reflect twice before buying his books.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Unfotrunately Shantaram did not grab my imagination at all. Nor did I find it emotionally satisfying. I realize Shataram is meant to be a kind of Bollywood tale – over the top, flowery, cliched etc. but the Bollywood movies I’ve seen have been engaging and strangely satisfying, despite their soppyness etc. Shantaram was not engaging because the poor writing and shallow characters spoil the tale.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
What a let down! After reading all the positive reviews and hearing all the talk about what a fantastic masterpiece this book is it took me precisely seventeen pages of tortured reading to set this book aside.
While the place setting is mildly intriguing the terrible prose quickly diminished any interest that was briefly picqued. Rather than having been written by an escaped convict holed up in a seedy hotel room smoking dope, it struck me as having been written by a not more than average college freshman holed up in a dormroom smoking dope.Whoever wrote the blurb on the take in deserves more credit.
All I can say is that it strikes me as a sad indicator of what proves to be well loved reading and which elicits such widespread adulation, if that is to be believed. I will say though that this “tome” is sufficiently beefy to act as fine doorstop.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I’ve rated this book poorly mostly out of irritation with ALL OF YOU who rumor has it that wouldn’t know a excellent book if you were beat over the head with it. Even lacking all the sheople bleating though, I’d still only give it two stars. Whatever charms this book displays are much better representaed in much better books.
Want to know what you’re getting in to? Read the *five* star reviews and look for phrases like “tedious”, “long winded”, “self aggrandizing”, and “stuffy prose”. With these shortcomings mentioned so heavily in the excellent reviews, how do you reflect it’s going to turn out?
That’s your first huge clue.
Reflect for yourself and consider: If you have to work so hard to plow through an leader’s drivel to see value, maybe the value is outweighed. Maybe it’s not there at all.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5