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Shantaram
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Shantaram (2003) (edit title/settings)

by Gregory David Roberts (Author) (edit contributors)

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"It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love 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 begins this epic, mesmerizing first novel set in the underworld of contemporary... read more

Summary edit see section history

Shantaram is a novel influenced by real events in the life of the author, Australian Gregory David Roberts. In 1978, Roberts was sentenced to nineteen years' imprisonment in Australia after being convicted of a series of armed robberies of building society branches, credit unions, and shops,... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

Shantaram is a novel influenced by real events in the life of the author, Australian Gregory David Roberts. In 1978, Roberts was sentenced to nineteen years' imprisonment in Australia after being convicted of a series of armed robberies of building society branches, credit unions, and shops, which he had committed to feed a heroin addiction after his marriage ended and he lost his daughter. In July 1980, he escaped from Victoria’s Pentridge Prison in broad daylight, thereby becoming one of Australia's most wanted men for the next ten years.

The protagonist arrives in Mumbai carrying a false passport in the name of Lindsay Ford. Mumbai was only a stopover on a journey that was to take Lin from New Zealand to Germany, but he decides to stay in the city. Lin soon meets a local man named Prabaker, whom he hires as a guide but soon becomes his best friend and who renames him Linbaba. Both men visit Prabaker's native village, Sunder, where Prabaker's mother christens Lin with the name Shantaram, meaning Man of God's Peace. On their way back to Mumbai and after a night out, Lin and Prabaker are robbed. With all his possessions gone, Lin is forced to live in the slums, giving him shelter from the authorities and free rent in Mumbai. After a massive fire on the day of his arrival in the slum, he sets up a free health clinic as a way to contribute to the community. He learns about the local culture and customs in this crammed environment, gets to know and love the people he encounters, and even becomes fluent in Marathi, the local language. He also witnesses and battles outbreaks of cholera and firestorms, becomes involved in trading with the lepers, and experiences how ethnic and marital conflicts are resolved in this densely crowded and diverse community.

The novel describes a number of foreigners of varied origin as well as local Indians, highlighting the rich diversity of life in Mumbai. Lin falls in love with Karla, a Swiss-American woman who refuses to love him back, befriends local artists and actors landing him roles as an extra in several Bollywood movies, and is recruited by the Mumbai underworld for various criminal operations, including drug and weapons trade. Lin eventually lands in Mumbai's Arthur Road Prison, where he endures many beatings and other physical and mental abuse by guards, while existing under extremely squalid conditions, along with hundreds of other inmates. However, thanks to the protection of Afghani mafia don "Abdel Khader Khan", Lin is eventually released, and works in black market currency exchange and passport forgery. Having travelled as far as Africa on trips commissioned by the mafia, Lin later goes to Afghanistan to smuggle weapons for mujahideen freedom fighters in Afghanistan. When his mentor Khan is killed, Lin realizes he became everything he grew to loathe and falls into depression after he returns. He decides that he must fight for what he believes is right, and build an honest life. The story ends with him planning to go to Sri Lanka which lays the premise for the sequel to this book.

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  • “The ancient sanskrit legends speak of a destined love, a karmic connection between souls that are fated to meet and collide and enrapture each another. The legends say that the loved one is instantly recognized because she's loved in every gesture, every expression of thought, every movement, every sound, and every mood that prays in her eyes. The legends say that we know her by wings_the wings that only we can see- and because wanting her kills every other desire of love.”
  • “"I think that suffering is a matter of choice. I think that we do not have to suffer anything in this life, if we are strong enough to deny it. The strong man can master his feelings so completely that it is almost impossible to make him suffer. When we do suffer things, like pain and so, it means that we have lost control. So I will say that suffering is a human weakness."”
  • “"I think that when we grow up, and learn that happiness is rare, and passes quickly, we become disillusioned and hurt. And how much we suffer is a mark of how much we have been hurt by this realisation. Suffering, you see, is a kind of anger. We rage against the unfairness, the injustice of our sad and sorry lot. And this boiling resentment, you see, this anger, is what we call suffering."”
  • “Happiness is a myth, it was invented to make us buy things.”
    Karla
  • “It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love 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. I realised, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn't sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it's all you've got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.”
    Shantaram
  • “Every day, when you're on the run, is the whole of your life. Every free minute is a short story with a happy ending.”
    Shantaram
  • “Love survives in us precisely because it is not wise.”
    Shantaram
  • “Craziness is the basis of many a fine relationships. In fact, craziness is the basis of every fine relationship!”
    Didier
  • “The dishonest bribe is the same in every country, but the honest bribe is India's alone.”
    Didier
  • “I am French. I am gay, I am Jewish, and I am a criminal, more or less in that order. Bombay is the only city I have ever found that allows me to be all four of those things, at the same time.”
    Didier
  • “I hate it when people take so long to drink a single glass. It is like putting on a condom to masturbate.”
    Didier
  • “Friendship is like a kind of algebra test that nobody passes.”
    Karla
  • “Prison wasn't hell, but there was no heaven it it, either. It its own way, that was just as bad.”
    Shantaram
  • “Some loves are like that. Most loves are like that, from what I can see. Your heart starts to feel like an overcrowded lifeboat. You throw your pride out to keep it afloat, and your self-respect and your independence. After a while you start throwing people out - your friends, everyone you used to know.”
    Karla
  • “They are not perfect, of course. They know how to fight and lie and cheat each other, and all the things that all of us do. But more than any other people in the world, the Indians know how to love one another.”
    Didier
  • “There's a dark feeling - less than hatred, but more than loathing that ugly men feel for handsome men. It's unreasonable and unjustified, of course, but it's always there, hiding in the long shadow thrown by envy. It creeps out, into the light of your eyes, when you're falling in love with a beautiful woman.”
    Shantaram
  • “It's impossible to be really sad when you're asleep. You can be happy and afraid and angry in your dreams, but you have to be wide awake to be sad, don't you think?”
    Ulla
  • “No man is as cool as he looks.”
    Karla
  • “Every city in the world has a village in its heart. You will never understand the city unless you first understand the village.”
    Didier
  • “There is no such thing as forever. I don't know why we use the word.”
    Karla
  • “I want everything. You know, I said that once, to a friend of mine, and told me that the real trick in life is to want nothing, and to succeed in getting it.”
    Karla
  • “Sometimes, in India, you have to surrender before you win.”
    Karla
  • “There's a kind of luck that's not much more than being in the right place at the right time, a kind of inspiration that's not much more than doing the right thing in the right way, and both only really happen to you when you empty your heart of ambition, purpose, and plan; when you give yourself, completely, to the golden, fate-filled moment.”
    Shantaram
  • “One of the reasons why we crave love, and seek it so desperately, is that love is the only cure for loneliness, and shame, and sorrow. But some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths about yourself are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. And some things are just so sad that only your soul can do the crying for you.”
    Shantaram
  • “When the wish and the fear are exactly the same, we call the dream a nightmare.”
    Didier
  • “It's a fact of life on run that you often love more people than you trust.”
    Shantaram
  • “Old habits die hard and lie harder.”
    Karla
  • “The truth is a bully we all pretend to like.”
    Karla
  • “If the fate doesn't make you laugh then you just didn't get the joke.”
    Karla
  • “The best way to predict the future is to build it yourself.”
  • “We all attempt suicide several times in our lives and sooner or later we all succeed.”
    Karla
  • “Silence can wound as surely as the twisting lash.”
    Lin
  • “Heroes only come in three kinds:dead,damaged or dubious.”
    Karla
  • “Fate always gives you two choices the one you should take and the one you do.”
    Karla
  • “Luck is what happens to you when fate gets tired of waiting.”
  • “Every heartbeat is a universe of possibilities.”
    Khaderbhai
  • “Everyone in this whole world is superstitious.”
    Karla
  • “What characterises the human race more,cruelty or the capacity to feel shame for it.”
    Karla
  • “Aking is a bad enemy,a worse friend ,and a fatal family relation.”
    Old Saying
  • “Some of the worst wrongs were caused by people who tried to change things.”
    Karla
  • “People do not understand the truly fantastic effort required in the corruption of a simple man.And the more simple the man, the more effort it requires.”
    Lin
  • “The same legends also carry warnings that such fated love may, sometimes, be the possessions and the obsession of one, and only one, of the two souls twinned by destiny.But wisdom, in one sense, is the opposite of love. Love survives in us precisely because it isn't wise.”
  • “he past reflects eternally between two mirrors_the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn't do or say”
  • “"For this is what we do. Put one foot forward and then the other. Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more. Think. Act. feel. Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day. With love: the passionate search for truth other than our own. With longing: the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on. God help us. God forgive us. We live on."”
    Shantaram
  • “Everyone in the whole world, was Indian in at least one past life.”
    Karla
  • “Wisdom is just cleverness, with all the guts kicked out of it.”
  • “News tells you what people did. Gossip tells you how much they enjoyed it.”
  • “Don’t hurry, Lin,’ Didier sighed, clutching at me with all his strength as we moved out into the traffic. ‘The best revenge, like the best sex, is performed slowly and with the eyes open.”
  • “Luck is what happens to you when fate gets tired of waiting”
  • “'The Indians are the Italians of Asia.....It can be said, certainly, with equal justice, that the Italians are the Indians of Europe, but you do understand me, I think. There is so much Italian in the Indians, and so much Indian in the Italians. They are both people of the Madonna - they demand a goddess, even if the religion does not provide one. Every man in both countries is a singer when he is happy, and every woman is a dancer when she walks to the shop at the corner. For then, food is the music inside the body, and music is food inside the heart. The language of India and the language of Italy, they make every man a poet, and make something beautiful from every banalite. These are the nations where love - amore, pyaar - makes a cavalier of a Borsalino on the street, and makes a princess of a peasant girl, if only for the second that her eyes meet yous."”
    Didier
  • “"Everything you ever sense, in touch or taste or sight or even thought, has an effect on you that's greater than zero."”
    Shantaram
  • “Love is the opposite of power. That's why we fear it so much.”
    Karla
  • “The simple and astonishing truth about India and Indian people is that when you go there and deal with them, your heart always guides you more wisely than your head. There's no where else in the world where that's quite so true.”
  • “One of the agonizing truths for a battle medic is that you pray as hard and almost as often for men to die as you pray for them to live.”
  • “...I wanted to die at least as much as I wanted to live.”
    Gregory David Roberts
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try to save them.’
    Highlighted by 550 Kindle customers
  • One of the reasons why we crave love, and seek it so desperately, is that love is the only cure for loneliness, and shame, and sorrow. But some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths about yourself are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. And some things are just so sad that only your soul can do the crying for you.
    Highlighted by 481 Kindle customers
  • It’s forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species would’ve annihilated itself in endless retributions. Without forgiveness, there would be no history. Without that hope, there would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without that dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive.
    Highlighted by 469 Kindle customers
  • Civilisation, after all, is defined by what we forbid, more than what we permit.’
    Highlighted by 454 Kindle customers
  • Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears. In the end that’s all there is: love and its duty, sorrow and its truth. In the end that’s all we have—to hold on tight until the dawn.
    Highlighted by 430 Kindle customers
  • Winston Churchill, who once defined a fanatic as someone who won’t change his mind and can’t change the subject.’
    Highlighted by 402 Kindle customers
  • There’s a kind of luck that’s not much more than being in the right place at the right time, a kind of inspiration that’s not much more than doing the right thing in the right way, and both only really happen to you when you empty your heart of ambition, purpose, and plan; when you give yourself, completely, to the golden, fate-filled moment.
    Highlighted by 398 Kindle customers
  • The past reflects eternally between two mirrors—the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn’t do or say.
    Highlighted by 384 Kindle customers
  • Optimism is the first cousin of love, and it’s exactly like love in three ways: it’s pushy, it has no real sense of humour, and it turns up where you least expect it.
    Highlighted by 338 Kindle customers
  • A mujaheddin fighter once told me that fate gives all of us three teachers, three friends, three enemies, and three great loves in our lives. But these twelve are always disguised, and we can never know which one is which until we’ve loved them, left them, or fought them.
    Highlighted by 317 Kindle customers
Show all 65 quotes from this book

First Sentence edit see section history

It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love 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. I realized, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you have got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.

Table of Contents edit see section history

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Acknowledgments

Series & Lists edit see section history

This is book 26 of 145 in Whitcoulls Top 100 (2011). (authoritative list)
This is book 24 of 121 in Whitcoulls Top 100 (2012). (authoritative list)
This is book 69 of 100 in Top 100 Books That Defined The Noughties (Telegraph). (authoritative list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Gregory David Roberts (Author)

Other Contributors:

  1. Humphrey Bower (Narrator)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Scribe
Country: Australia
Publication Date: 2003
ISBN: 1-920769-00-5
Page Count: 936

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: PR9619.4.R625 S53
  • Dewey: 823.92

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Adults

Drugs, war, gangster lifestyle.

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

Movie Connections edit see section history

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
  • The Glass Palace
  • Sacred Games

Books Cited by This Book edit see section history

   
  • Dead Souls
  • The Divine Comedy
  • The Charterhouse of Parma

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