Shantaram

Another long book, this one courtesy of Martha & May, both of whom recommended it. Thank you both!

Shantaram reminded me of Rudyard Kipling's classic, Kim, although obviously it has little in common with that twentieth-century masterpiece, other than being set in the Indian sub-continent. Another point of contact between the two works is that the protagonists of both take part in a spiritual quest.

The edition of Shantaram from which I am quoting was published by St. Martin's Press in 2003. Its author is Gregory David Roberts, the first Australian whose work I have written a commentary for on The Marginal Virtues. If you haven't read the book, you might want to turn to it first before reading this commentary, as I will reveal details about the plot and the like as I deem it necessary.

I think it could be fairly said that Shantaram does for Bombay, to a certain extent, what The Lord of the Rings did for Middle-earth, which is provide an aesthetic structure in which the 'world' in which the novel takes place takes on a life and character of its own. We shall see whether this is the case. Meanwhile I found that because the entirety of the work is written from the perspective of the first-person, semi-authobiographical narrator, Lin, it lacked a distinct prose style. On the other hand, I feel that Roberts does do a good job of writing distinct styles of dialogue, as we shall see.