Shantaram
Gregory David Roberts
 Shantaram is a novel influenced by real events in the life of the author, Australian Gregory David Roberts. In 1978, Roberts was sentenced to 19-year imprisonment in Australia after being convicted of a series of armed robberies of building society branches, credit unions, and shops. 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 Lindsay (according to the book, Roberts' fake name) 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 him from New Zealand to Germany, but he decides to stay in the city. Lindsay soon meets a local man named Prabaker whom he hires as a guide, but soon becomes his best friend and renames him Lin (Linbaba). Both men visit Prabaker's native village, Sunder, where Prabaker's mother decided to give Lin a new Maharashtrian name, like her own. Because she judged his nature to be blessed with peaceful happiness, she decided to call him Shantaram, meaning Man of God's Peace. On their way back to Mumbai 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 various origins, as well as local Indians, highlighting the rich diversity of life in Mumbai. Lin falls in love with Karla, a Swiss-American woman who does not 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 Afghan 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. Based on Roberts' known biography, Shantaram reads as largely factual. A few parts of the story, such as Roberts' criminal history and escape from prison in Australia, are a matter of public record, while others remain harder (or impossible) to verify. There is a great deal of debate as to where the boundaries lie between fact and fiction in the book. Roberts has stated the characters in the story are largely invented, and that he merged different elements taken from true events and people into such events and characters like Prabaker 'of the big smile'. In March 2006, the Mumbai Mirror, reported they may have discovered the inspiration for the big smile of the character Prabaker as belonging to a still living cab driver called Kishore, who took Roberts to his home village. "With respect, Shantaram is not an autobiography, it’s a novel. If the book reads like an autobiography, I take that as a very high compliment, because I structured the created narrative to read like fiction but feel like fact. I wanted the novel to have the page-turning drive of a work of fiction but to be informed by such a powerful stream of real experience that it had the authentic feel of fact." As with the novel Shantaram, the experiences in The Mountain Shadow are derived from my own real experiences, and the characters, dialogue, and narrative structure are all created.