Why a Booktrail?
1980s: A compelling autobiographical novel of an Australian criminal who escapes to a new life in Mumbai.
Shantaram
What you need to know before your trail
Set in the underworld of contemporary Bombay, Shantaram is the story of Lin, an escaped convict with a false passport. He flees his prison in Australia and takes himself off to Bombay where he plans to disappear with his friend Prabaker.
Not having an identity or family of any kind, Lin is a man in a sea of loneliness but he soon gets involved with running a clinic in one of the city’s poor slum areas.
He is on the run however and is comes up against a series of events and situations that are at times hard to bear. His work with the mafia draws him deeper and deeper into the city’s underbelly.
Travel Guide
Based on the life of the author makes this novel all the more remarkable and helps to understand the 900 or so pages of what he went through during his time in Bombay.
This is a city of contrasts it would seem and very unique seen through the eyes of an escaped convict – there are the slums yes, but also the glamour of the city in other places described. There is the spiritual city too as well as the mafia side of things.
“The first thing I noticed about Bombay, on that first day, was the smell of the different air… It smells of ten thousand restaurants, five thousand temples, shrines, churches and mosques, and of a hundred bazaars devoted exclusively to perfumes, spices, incense and freshly cut flowers.”
Lin’s life whichever parts are based on the author’s own, are a mix of heady experiences, fate and luck but this world is a colourful one from the moment he sets up the clinic to when he gets embroiled in the Bombay mafia, the cast of characters is an insight into the Indian culture, underbelly, dark side but also of humanity in all its forms.
This is also the journey of one man and the moment he learns of the true sense of ‘freedom’ that despite him being tortured he can still have freedom –
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.”
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