Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts (4.5 stars)

This seems to be my year for reading epic novels. I have to admit that the 933 small-font pages of Shantaram were fairly intimidating, and I was reluctant to begin reading. The feeling dissolved almost immediately when I picked it up, this book is amazing.

Roberts has led a phenomenal life: heroin addict, escaped convict and Australia's most wanted man, mumbai (bombay) slum doctor, mumbai mafia 'goonda' counterfeiter/smuggler/dealer, and Mujahideen fighter in Afganistan.

I don't think I will look at any slum anywhere in the world in quite the same way after reading this novel. Roberts' slum is an amazing community where everyone works together, taking turns at the dirty cleaning jobs, and pulling together to fight fire, cholera, and the monsoon rains. All slums might not be as loving and carefully cared for as the community presented by Roberts, but it is a very different perspective to the horror with which most Westerners view slums.

I loved the description of the Indian head wiggle, and how Roberts gained instant smiles when he adopted it on the train to Prabaker's village. In conversation the side-to-side wiggle means 'yes' or 'I agree with you' or 'yes, I would like that', but it can also be used as a greeting to show you are friendly.

Roberts is a deeply philosophical man, and much of the book is devoted to philosophical discussions he has. I found some of these passages a bit boring, like the one on the nature of suffering:

...is it not true that some of our strength comes from suffering? That suffering hardship makes us stronger? That those of us who have never known a real hardship, and true suffering cannot have the same strength as others, who have suffered...

I also got a bit sick of the fawning descriptions of pretty much every woman he was ever friends with - I get it, your friends are good looking:

Her eyes were large and spectacularly green. it was the green that trees are, in vivid dreams. It was the green that the sea would be, if the sea were perfect.

A final thing I will never forget is the descriptions of the Colaba lockup where Lin (Roberts) spends three weeks and the infamous Arthur Road prison where he spends four months. In Colaba there were three overcrowded rooms and a corridor - Lin ends up breaking a man's nose and bites a chunk out of his attacker's cheek just to secure a place to stand:

...even at the foul end of the corridor, where shit and piss flowed onto the floor in a repulsive, reeking sludge, men fought each other for an inch of space that was slightly shallower in the muck.

In Arthur road Lin weathers systematic brutal beatings, starvation, and the constant attack of thousands of body lice.

Amazing book. The movie is supposedly coming out in 2011, although it has been delayed a number of times already. Looking forward to it.

4.5 stars.