If one has to summarise in three words Gregory David Roberts' 2004 debut novel Shantaram, then it has to be this: "Dostoevsky meets Bollywood".
Or, that is what I thought after yet another scene in the novel in which Bombay's (when the story unfolds, the bustling Indian island city is about another couple of decades away from being re-named Mumbai in response to a Hindu nationalist popular groundswell) chic set banter and indulge themselves in one of the city's fashionable tourist haunts by the sea.
And what a chic set it is. Roberts, who tells the story in first person, drinks, smokes, eats and philosophises with local Indian journalists, film producers, mafia enforcers, Iranian army deserters, washed-up Palestinian fighters, Pakistani spies, European outcasts, and an Afghan mafia boss who claims to have found the rational basis of morality.
And just like Bollywood movies that the author claims to love, the novel packs a lot of action, and enough surprises to satisfy even the most demanding fan of Bollywood suspense thrillers. However, the book is much more than a pulp version of Bollywood.
At the heart of the narrative is that eternal quest for meaning, love and redemption that inform all great works of art. Roberts, who escaped from a maximum security jail in Victoria while serving a sentence for armed robbery, finds all of these and more in the most unlikely of places and persons.
Towards the very end of the 933 pages long book, Roberts declares: "The truth is that, no matter what kind of game you find yourself in, no matter how good or bad the luck, you can change your life completely with a single thought or a single act of love".
One can only say "Amen!" to that and recommend the book as a must read.
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