This novel, based on true events in the Bombay underworld over a period of eight years, tells an extraordinary story in an engaging style, full of indomitable courage and a focus on achieving a moral purpose. It is the 1980s. Gregory David Roberts is a robber and a heroin addict. He escapes from an Australian prison and comes to India and settles in a slum in Bombay. He then opens a free health clinic in Bombay. During this time he joins the mafia and gets involved in money laundering, fraud and gangsterism. In the meantime he learns Hindi and Marathi, falls in love, and spends time in an Indian prison. But if one thinks that he will become weak, then it is not so. He acts in Bollywood and fights with the mujahideen in Afghanistan... Amazingly, Roberts wrote Shantaram three times, even though the first two times were destroyed by prison guards. This is a tribute to his willpower. The novel is at once a thrilling, daring tale and a love story, a brutal yet tender, poetic tale of a fugitive. -Time Out