Book of the Week

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
Recommended by Daniel Jourdan

This highly fictionalised autobiography tells the tale of a rebellious heroin addict who, in 1980, escapes an Australian maximum-security prison having served 2 years of a 19-year sentence for armed robbery.

After fleeing to Bombay as a 'brave, hard man without a plan', he swiftly finds lasting companionship in a friendly street guide named Prabaker, who introduces him to the seedy life of the city and insists that he changes his false name Lindsay, to Lin, or Linbaba.

Before long, the protagonist revives elements of his former lifestyle and becomes a member of the mafia, whilst pursuing romantic interest in the enigmatic Swiss-American Karla. From there onwards he embarks on a breath-taking journey of crime, adrenaline, and indeed love, from the squalid slums to the recently invaded Afghan mountains. Action packed yet contemplative, violent but idealistic, light-hearted whilst numbingly bleak; this book has a tempting plot which is hard not to be enthralled by.

Nevertheless, some are inevitably put off by the seemingly relentless purple prose, the frequent self-important aphorisms and the somewhat trite philosophies. Put simply, one either falls in love with this book, or wishes it had never existed. The primary flaw which most people object to is the author’s apparent romanticising of almost everything, whether it be poverty, crime, people, relationships - even his own gruesome torture.

However, I would argue that this criticism misses the very concept makes this book so intriguing; the unashamedly visceral, almost fantastical way in which the author seems to perceive the world around him. When reading this book, one is forced to ask a key question: why didn’t Roberts simply document his experiences in a memoir? Was his indulgent sentimentalism simply a coping mechanism for scarring traumas of the past, or did he really experience life with such an impassioned disposition?

'The past reflects eternally between two mirrors, the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn’t say,' writes Roberts rather fittingly. The reader, wary of the seductive tone, is always guessing as to what mirror they are being shown and to what extent the reality of each situation has been warped. But once the dust settles and the reader is given time to mull over the book as a whole, it becomes apparent that its most fascinating element is the profound (and most likely unintentional) insight provided into the real-life Roberts himself.