Shantaram

"It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured."

This is how the enormous, captivating debut book, set in the underbelly of modern-day Bombay, opens. Lin, an escaped prisoner using a fake passport who escapes Australia's highest security facility for the crowded streets of a city where he may vanish, tells the story of Shantaram.

The two join Bombay's underground society of beggars and gangsters, prostitutes and holy men, soldiers and performers, Indians and exiles from other nations, who seek in this extraordinary location what they cannot find elsewhere. Accompanied by his guide and devoted friend, Prabaker.

Lin, a persecuted man without a family, home, or name, runs a clinic in one of the city's lowest slums and serves as an apprentice in the Bombay mafia's dark arts while looking for love and purpose in life. His quest takes him to war, torture in jail, murder, and a string of dark and brutal betrayals. Two individuals possess the keys to unlocking the secrets and intrigues that connect Lin. The first is Khader Khan, tutor to Lin in the Golden City's underground, criminal-philosopher-saint, and godfather of the mafia. Karla is the second; she is enigmatic, hazardous, and stunning, and her desires are fuelled by secrets that both haunt and provide her with frightening power.

Enormous slums and opulent hotels, intense love and heartbreak in jail, criminal warfare and Bollywood movies, spiritual gurus and mujaheddin rebels—this massive book encompasses the whole gamut of human experience, with a deep love for India at its core. It is, by any measure, the literary debut of a remarkable voice, based on the life of the author.