Shantaram

Author: Gregory David Roberts

Rating: 2/5

Lin is an escaped convict who builds a new life for himself in India by immersing himself in criminal activity.

Spoilers ahead.

Detailed Summary

Lindsay Ford (which isn’t the real name of the protagonist) escapes from Australia to Bombay, India. Lin hires Prabaker as his guide who takes him to meet Karla, a beautiful Swiss woman whom Lin falls for. Prabaker and Lin become good friends and the guide shows Lin the “real Bombay” including the criminal underworld. He meets foreign criminals at a bar called Leopold’s. Prabaker takes Lin to his village where he learns Marathi and is named “Shantaram” by Prabaker’s mother. While returning to Bombay, Lin and Prabaker become super drunk and are robbed. Since Lin has a fake passport and is technically an illegal tourist, Prabaker arranges for Lin to stay with him in the slum. Lin uses his basic medical knowledge to help the slum-dwellers. A criminal named Abdel Khader Khan contacts Lin saying he wants to supply Lin with black-market medical supplies. Lin agrees. Khader also sends his nephew Tariq to stay with Lin for a while. Karla asks Lin to help her free Lisa, a friend, from Madame Zhou’s prostitution ring. The plan works but Madame Zhou realises Lin isn’t a diplomat and seeks revenge. There’s a cholera outbreak in the slum. Karla helps Lin and they sleep together. Lin is arrested where he’s beaten and tortured. He’s finally released when his friend Vikram learns he’s there and Khader bribes the officers. Lin pursues Karla in Goa, they sleep together but Lin insists on returning. He works for Khader, making fake passports. There’s an incident where he’s involved in a murder with Lisa. There are deaths going around under Sapna’s name. Abdullah, his closest friend from the mafia, is killed. Prabaker dies in a car accident. Lin takes up heroin again but Khader tracks him down and sends Karla and Nazeer to help him recover.

Khader asks Lin to come with him to Afghanistan. There, Lin learns that Khader had essentially orchestrated his time in India. He sent Karla to recruit Lin, supplied medicines for the slum to test if they were effective, knew that Lin was in prison etc. Lin is unhappy and refuses to accompany Khader. Nazeer brings Khader’s dead body back. They flee from the Pakistani border but are attacked. Lin loses consciousness. He wakes up in Pakistan, having been rescued by Nazeer. They return to Bombay and kill Ghani who betrayed Khader. Lin seeks revenge on Madame Zhou but her place is already burnt down. Abdullah turns out to be alive. The Bombay underworld is in shambles, everyone vying to get Khader’s seat. The group Lin is a part of wins but at the cost of losing their leader. Nazeer asks Lin to come with him to Sri Lanka. Lin meets Karla who has a new boyfriend. She refuses to say she loves him. Lin agrees to go to Sri Lanka. He visits Prabaker’s parents who are at the slum. Prabaker’s son has his smile.

Plot and Pacing

Oh god, where to begin? How about some backstory? This book has been recommended to me by several gazillion people ranging from the Librarian (if you’re reading this, WHY?!?!?!) to my own sister (again, WHY?!?!!?). Everyone has gushed about how amazing and life-changing this book is. (Except my mother who DNF’d it to read something better written. She’s a wise woman.) I was hoping Shantaram would give me some perspective on life. With 2020 going the way it is–Covid, politicians arguing like kindergarteners, racism, ugh, need I go on?–I wanted a book that would change the way I thought about things. Perhaps offer me some invaluable lesson about life.

Shantaram did not fill that void. About a chapter into the book, I decided to lower my expectations and expect the Indian version of The Godfather. By the end of part one, I lowered them more and decided to just sit tight on the rollercoaster, ready to be immersed into a diverse country which–hey, what do you know?–just so happens to be the one I am from. After the second part, I lowered my expectations even more to just some dude telling his story. But by part freaking three, I was done. 

Lin’s story is crazy as hell. He gets roped up into all kinds of shenanigans. That’s not the part that annoyed me. What completely drove me up the wall was how none of the characters had any substance whatsoever, there doesn’t seem to be a point to his story and all those philosophical tidbits scattered around like grains of sand in my swimming suit after a day at the beach used fancy words but conveyed nothing. And you know what they say about sand! It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.

There’s a good deal of lazy writing (more on that in a bit) and the story felt somewhat artificial which is weird because it’s semi-autobiographical. I think Roberts glorified the Bombay underworld a lot. Although I liked that it was a fresh perspective on India, I felt, at least in the first half of the book, that “deep” personalities were attached to the mafia heads to justify their actions.

I did really love how Roberts wrote about India. I think his passion for the country really does shine through in his writing. It always made me smile when he identified a characteristic quirk of Indians. I loved how he could see through the horrible mess the country can sometimes be. It reignited all the things I do inevitably love about India even though it does, sometimes, make me want to bang my head against a lamp house-elf style. Yet I was annoyed with how the negative aspects of India weren’t clearly illustrated. For example, I can’t imagine it would have been nice to been watched by others while pooping in the slums. Also, I think Lin was lucky in the way he was treated. He got a lot of special treatment just because he was white. Roberts does brush over this a few times but I think it should have been emphasised a bit more.

To clarify, I don’t have an issue with the story being told. Nor am I judging this book based on Roberts’ life. His past is his past and there’s nothing to change that. I certainly can’t do anything about it. And though the events in the book didn’t sit well with me, I would much rather know that such atrocities are happening. Ignorance isn’t bliss. My dislike from this book stems from its lack of development in literally everything.

Characters

I didn’t get attached to any of the characters primarily because they were so flat that I could have slid them through the gap of my door. Lin didn’t have any flaws other than being really good at crime which, in the book, wasn’t really that bad a thing. I liked how he fully surrendered to Indian culture and spoke Marathi and Hindi. Actually, him learning Marathi so quickly embarrassed me because it’s my mother-tongue and I still can’t speak it fluently. I absolutely despised his “love at first sight” attraction for Karla.

Speaking of Karla, I don’t think I’ve encountered a character as annoying and infuriating as her. I didn’t understand why Lin was obsessed with her. She seemed aloof and her whole “I can’t love” mindset made me roll my eyes so hard that my sockets now hurt. I didn’t think any of what she said was particularly deep and I hated how she led so many men on. She acts like she can’t help it but, in my opinion, you absolutely can help the type of person you are. It’s up to you to decide how to react and grow to events in your life.

Prabaker was really the only character I liked–actually, no, I also liked Kano the bear–but he was a stereotypical character. There was nothing more to him other than him being poor, too trusting and not that intelligent. It almost felt like his only purpose was to show the reader how well Lin adapted to Indian life. Even his smile didn’t make up for the lack of depth in his personality.

The other characters–Abdullah, Nazeer, Khader, Lisa, Ulla, Modena, Dodier, Vikram–kind of blended together. I mean, they had one or two distinct characteristics such as how Vikram enjoyed liked all things cowboy-related, and Lisa had beautiful blue eyes and Khader was a father-figure to Lin. I just didn’t care for any of it.

Writing Style

I propose a new drinking game (with hot chocolate obviously because I’m a teetotaler) where we down a glass every time Karla’s green eyes are described. Or Khader drops a paragraph or two about complexity and other philosophies. The metaphors and similes used were borderline chaotic and, a lot of times, just didn’t really make sense. I felt Roberts was trying too hard and dumping all of this rhetorical language without taking the audience into consideration (though I guess I am in the minority when I say I didn’t like this book).

There was definitely a lot of lazy writing. Lin just “has a feeling” that some character or other is “good” or that they’d “get along well.” The most common feedback on writing is “show don’t tell” and while this shouldn’t be taken to the extreme (always showing), Roberts does a whole lot of telling which made my eyebrows do a funny dance across my forehead.

Also, I was just bored. It was sooo long and there was so much missed opportunity for adding suspense and tension. Every time something new happened, I would just heave a sigh and wonder WHY?!??!! That’s not how a book is supposed to make you feel.

The bottom line is: there are some nine-hundred-page books worth spraining your wrist for; Shantaram is not one of them.