In 1978, gifted student and writer Greg Roberts turned to heroin when his marriage collapsed, feeding his addiction with a string of robberies. Caught and convicted, he was given a nineteen-year sentence. After two years, he escaped from a maximum- security prison, spending the next ten years on the run as Australia's most wanted man. Hiding in Bombay, he established a medical clinic for slum- dwellers, worked in the Bollywood film industry and served time in the notorious Arthur Road prison. He was recruited by one of the most charismatic branches of the Bombay mafia for whom he worked as a forger, counterfeiter, and smuggler, and fought alongside a unit of mujaheddin guerrilla fighters in Afghanistan. His debut novel, SHANTARAM, is based on this ten-year period of his life in Bombay. The result is an epic tale of slums and five-star hotels, romantic love and prison torture, mafia gang wars and Bollywood films. A gripping adventure story, SHANTARAM is also a superbly written meditation on good and evil and an authentic evocation of Bombay life.

Prizes

Shortlisted for Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best First Book 2004 and Nielsen BookData/ABA Book of the Year Award - Booksellers' Choice 2003.

A literary masterpiece ... at once erudite and intimate, reflective and funny ... it has the grit and pace of a thriller DAILY TELEGRAPH Powerful and original ... a remarkable achievement SUNDAY TELEGRAPH Extraordinarily vivid ... a gigantic, jaw-dropping, grittily authentic saga DAILY MAIL A publishing phenomenon SUNDAY TIMES

Greg Roberts was born in Melbourne. He speaks four languages and has travelled widely in Asia, Africa and Europe. He is now a full-time writer, and since Shantaram's publication in Australia he has become a columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald.