Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram #1)

In 1978 Gregory David Roberts – a young writer and activist – committed a series of robberies while addicted to heroin, and was sentenced to nineteen years in jail. After two years, he escaped from a maximum-security prison in broad daylight, and became Australia’s most wanted man.

Hiding in Bombay, he established a medical clinic for slum-dwellers, and worked as a counterfeiter, smuggler and gunrunner for one of the most charismatic branches of the Bombay mafia. Shantaram is based on this ten-year period of his life.

The result is an epic tale of slums and mansions, romantic love and prison torture, philosophers and assassins, mafia gang wars and Bollywood films. A gripping adventure story, Shantaram is also a superbly written meditation on good and evil and an authentic evocation of Bombay life.