ROBERTS, Gregory David.

£3,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Shantaram. First edition, first printing, inscribed by the author on the title page, "May all those you love find the truth in you and be true to your love, David Gregory Roberts, November 2003". Roberts's debut novel fictionalizes his experiences as a convicted bank robber and prison escapee who made a new life for himself in India.Roberts described himself as "a revolutionary who lost his ideals in heroin, a philosopher who lost his integrity in crime, and a poet who lost his soul in a maximum-security prison" (New York Times). He began writing the novel during his re-imprisonment in Australia but resolved to finish it upon his release after a guard had twice destroyed his manuscript. The novel later inspired the television series of 2022.The international best-seller met with highly favourable reviews. The New York Times wrote that "nearly everything about Bombay agrees with the philosophical fugitive, for whom every new experience is an eloquent signpost into an uncertain future. He finds a father figure in a gurulike local mafia boss, an Afghan named Khader, and a lover in a mysterious Swiss woman who inspires the most memorable of the novel's many metaphoric interludes: 'My body was her chariot, and she drove it into the sun. Her body was my river, and I became the sea'" (O'Grady).

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