Shantaram is based on the real life experiences of the author, Gregory David Roberts, in India in the 1980's. It follows his escape from prison in Australia as he falls in love with Bombay. The protagonist, 'Lin', becomes caught up in and part of the city through his interactions with the massive cast of characters he meets along the way. From living in a slum, running a free clinic, to 4 months in an Indian prison, and on to his time in Afghanistan fighting the Russians, Lin's story is never boring.
The story is packed so full of incident and characters that sometimes it was difficult to remember who was who, and what they'd done in the last chapter, but the strength of the writing was the big draw. Lin exists in a morally and ethically grey area - he does the wrong things for the right reasons. He's not evil - he never kills anybody, but there are some graphic scenes of eye-gouging that had me groaning out loud - yet he knows what he's doing is wrong, for example when he's running a fake passport operation. The slums and mafia bosses are all humanised - as are the Afghan Mujahedeen - the latter is particularly interesting in light of the current situation in that country. Written in 2003, before the Afghan War became such a failure, the author is not being anti-war, but he does make reference to the Americans arming the Afghans against the Russians, something that obviously came back to bite the US later. The book is not about politics though, it's about relationships. The (sometimes a bit groan-worthy) passages at the end of most chapters consist of Lin's trying to come to terms with aspects of his life and I think are veiled advertisements for the author's philosophy. Such moralising doesn't detract from the book's strengths. There are also moments in the story that made me smile, or even chuckle to myself, such as a language/culture clash that occurs when Lin is sent a performing bear to hug, when he mentions to Abdullah that he misses bear hugs.
Most of the heart comes not from the ongoing love story between Lin and the emotionally unreachable Karla, but from his relationship with his slum-dwelling Indian friend, Prabaker. The way Roberts writes Prabaker's dialogue comes across slightly comic at times, as the broken English of many of the Indian characters is written as it would really be spoken. This adds to the authenticity of the tale, but never does Lin (or Roberts) use the characters' language to poke fun at these decent people.
I've now read a little about Roberts online, and learnt that there may be a movie coming out in a year or two (there have been several delays), and more interestingly, further instalments of Lin's tale. I was a little saddened to learn that the novel is most non-autobiographical, although the main events of the book did actually happen to the author. I would like to believe that there really was a Prabaker though, one of the only morally just characters in the book, and the heart of the thing. When he is written out towards the end there is a gaping hole left in the heart of the book. I look forward to the further 'adventures' of Lin.
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