The Reading of Shantaram – a Work in Progress
September 23rd 2007 07:57
Image: abc.net.au
But alas … within a dozen pages I was hooked and I am still wondering how I missed this book when it came out approximately 4 years ago!
Based on the author’s life on the run after escaping from an Australian prison, he makes it to Bombay where getting lost in the teeming populous becomes his safe guard against discovery. However, within hours of arriving he is befriended by the gregarious guide and minder, Prabaker, who introduces him to a city and its people that he soon learns to love and which becomes an integral path to his destiny.
Sounds heavy I know, but Roberts manages to tell this story with just the right degree of detail and insight that has you walking the streets, sleeping in the slums and even, (imagine going there again!!) smoking the hashish right along with him. His description and obvious respect for India and its people cuts clear as glass and you soon realise that what you are reading is actually a love story – a love story for India.
My curiosity got the better of me and I did a little research on Gregory Roberts. His life and experiences seemed just a tad fabricated, so before being completely pulled in by his book, I wanted to know more. A brilliant philosophy major, Roberts became addicted to heroine after he lost his daughter in a custody battle. He then supported his habit through robbery (with a plastic gun, no less!) and was sentenced to 19 years in prison. There is plenty of info on the net and if there is any misrepresentation or untruth to his claims, they have not been, nor are they now likely to be, discovered. The facts appear to be well documented and I came away with nothing less than admiration for this man. Let’s face it … if Chopper Read can be considered a successful author, Roberts has to be elevated to a literary genius!
So now I am committed to another 700 pages! And I have a feeling that by the time I’m finished I will have a completely new understanding and regard for India, its culture and the many class tiers that make up its social structure.
I do have a nagging question though, and I don’t think it can be answered by finishing the book. Is there anyone out there that can enlighten me as to why Roberts decided to tell his story through fiction? From what I can discern, his biography would have been just as, if not more riveting. He spent five years writing Shantaram, and I’m curious as to why he would assign (to a certain degree) his life story to the fiction shelves.
Of course, a book such as this just has to be made into a movie. With the rights sold to Johnny Depp in 2005, we are still waiting on production to begin (early next year I believe). I have my doubts of how they will pull this one off. It will have to be an epic movie and it could struggle with the intensity of human emotion required to tell Roberts story. I will definitely be watching it, (I should be finished the book by then!) but don’t just sit back and wait to be spoon fed this book … read it … even if you have to be abandoned on a desert island to do it!
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