Shantaram September 11, 2008

We met at the Thompsons to discuss Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. The book was 936 pages long--our longest book so far! Jennifer had been to India recently and shared slides of her trip on her laptop. It turned out that most everything in the book actually happened to the author. The events were real, but the characters, dialogue and settings were fictional. It was generally felt that the book took a wrong turn when it shifted to Afghanistan and that the story became disparate and darker at that point. The first two thirds of the book were delightful and we all laughed about the "outer underpants." Some of the main characters were Lin, the Australian, former heroin-addict, prison escapee, Prabaker, the guileless tour guide, Karla, the mysterious love interest and Abdel Khader Khan, the Indian Mafia Benefactor. A movie of this book is scheduled to be released in 2011, starring Johnny Depp. The author is currently working on a sequel to this book.