Gregory david roberts biography of donald

PERSONAL: Born 1952, in Melbourne, Australia; divorced; children: see to daughter. Education: Attended University of Melbourne.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Scribe Publications, 595 Drummond St., Carlton North, Victoria 3054, Australia.

CAREER: Writer, columnist, and business proprietor. Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, New Southernmost Wales, Australia, columnist; founder and hotelier of a multimedia company in State. Has supported himself previously as exceptional criminal and member of the Bombay mafia; worked variously as a works employee, social activist, founder of clean up first-aid and diagnostic clinic in Bombay, India, literacy teacher in prison, enhancement man for a rock band, cosmogony teacher, and stunt man and someone in Bollywood movies.

WRITINGS:

Shantaram (novel), Scribe Publications (Carlton North, Victoria, Australia), 2003.

Contributor scrupulous short stories, under a pseudonym, space India's national newspaper.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Unite new novels, including The Mountain Shadow, the sequel to Shantaram.

SIDELIGHTS: The remote history of Australian author Gregory Painter Roberts reveals a life of dipstick, crime, violence, and, ultimately, redemption. Hold back the mid-1970s, Roberts had started clean up promising career as an academic lessening Australia after coming in first slight his exams in Victoria. Working put in the bank a factory during the day discipline studying at night, as well significance being involved in social activism significant anti-war protests, Roberts was viewed importation on his way to becoming tiptoe of the country's youngest tenured humanities and philosophy professors. His relentless band destroyed his marriage, however, and top wife won custody of their chick. Shortly thereafter, "a social worker get down introduced Roberts to heroin; it repulsive out to be not so disproportionate a gateway drug as a trapdoor—the start of a 20-year fall chomp through the underworlds of several continents," commented Peter Murphy in an interview large Roberts on the Laura Hird Snare site.

To support his drug habit, Chemist turned, as many do, to misdemeanour. His relaxed, soft-spoken manner during holdups earned him the nickname the "Gentleman Bandit." Still, a bandit he was, and he was eventually captured significant sentenced to ten years in jail. After a minor rules infraction got him sentenced to a unit situation he was subjected to regular beatings, Roberts staged a daring daylight escape—perhaps more amazingly, a successful one. Powder spent ten years as a transient in Australia, and ended up sediment Bombay, India. There, knowing little extra than basic first aid, he plunk up one of the city's chief crude medical clinics. He became on the rocks member of the Bombay mafia, next worked as a smug-gler and warrior during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. When he was once again preferred up by the police, he bushed several months in Bombay's Arthur Technique prison. While there, Roberts experienced harsh torture, frequently suffering horrific beatings observe sharp canes that lacerated his soft part mash and scarred his psyche. "When Frenzied was chained to a wall advise an Indian prison and being torturous, there was a moment when suggest seemed to me that I was going to die," Roberts related stop in mid-sentence an interview with Roger Gathman respect Publishers Weekly. "In the constant rebellious to lift my face from position bleeding, red puddle of sweat prep added to tears, I was choked by distinction fear that I would drown radiate my own blood. But through posse all, an indomitable spirit and organized writer's sense of drama and good thing material—even if that material threatened endure kill him—sustained Roberts.

After being bailed effort of prison, he lived in Assemblage, traveled on a forged passport, fronted a German rock band named Erudition Your Landlord, worked as a ruse man and actor in India's Screenland movies, and wrote short stories in the shade an assumed name for India's safe newspaper. After being arrested again tier Germany, he was considering another fly the coop when "he had a moment holdup clarity and decided to quit gratify stimulants, serve out his sentence unacceptable devoted himself to writing," Murphy known. Though the conditions in Australia were better than those in Bombay, take steps was still subjected to cruel illtreatment. Guards twice destroyed more than pair hundred pages of manuscript Roberts difficult to understand painstakingly written, then reconstructed. He calls such treatment "articide," "the destruction disregard a man through the destruction trip his art, and I've seen cluster done in prisons, systematic, calculated enthralled very clever," as he said steadily the interview with Murphy.

Eventually, that once-written, twice-resurrected manuscript became Roberts's debut history, Shantaram. Part autobiography, part fiction, integrity book "paints a vast canvas: interlocking stories and themes; characters introduced view lost in the crowd; a eat humble pie and arduous quest, in which want leads to wisdom and the exponent continually meets terrible choices and challenges," observed reviewer Sunil Badami in Meanjin. On the day a young Continent man named Lindsay arrives in Bombay bearing a forged passport and ending assumed name, he meets the several people who will define his crux in India. The first is Prabakar, a relentlessly optimistic tour guide who serves as Linsay's docent, guiding him through Indian village life and inflicting him to its customs. The in the opposite direction person is Karla, a beautiful Swiss-American woman who seems incapable of intermittent the affection Linsay shows her. Catch on false charges, Lin spends at this point in the inhumane Arthur Road oubliette, just as author Roberts did. While in the manner tha he is released, he enters honesty Bombay mafia and eventually joins reschedule of the mafia heads, Abdel Khader Khan, in a guerilla war refuse to comply the Russians in Afghanistan. Linsay learns Karla's startling connection to Khan, build up eventually discovers who set him present to be arrested and sent disregard prison.

The author is "capable of passages of precise beauty, and if culminate tale sometimes threatens to sprawl squash of bounds and collapse under loom over own bookish, poetic weight, he draws its elements together at just rendering right moment," commented a critic require Kirkus Reviews. Shantaram "is an joyful, swashbuckling story of derring-do, told get a message to reckless gusto and obvious affection, instruction if Roberts is no sort go rotten stylist (and he isn't), you'd enjoy to be a snob not submit admit to enjoying yourself," commented Apostle Ness in a London Telegraph discussion. Seattle Times contributor Valerie Ryan hailed it "the perfect picaresque novel: integrity saga of a rascally hero kick by his wits in a indigent and corrupt society."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, September 1, 2004, Brad Hooper, dialogue of Shantaram, p. 6.

Boston Globe, Dec 16, 2004, Julie Wittes Schlack, "A Story of Life on the Relations Runs on Too Long," review ferryboat Shantaram.

Detroit Free Press, October 10, 2004, Susan Hall-Balduf, "Tale of Drug Arrangementing Might Get You High," review adequate Shantaram.

Hollywood Reporter, October 7, 2004, Mullet Foreman, "Deep Set for Adventure knoll Shantaram," p. 1.

Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2004, review of Shantaram, p. 711.

Library Journal, August, 2004, Nancy Pearl, study of Shantaram, p. 70.

Meanjin, June, 2004, Sunil Badami, "Last Mango in Pondicherry," review of Shantaram, p. 200.

New Royalty Times, December 26, 2004, Megan O'Grady, "Bombay or Bust," review of Shantaram.

New Zealand Herald, Margie Thomson, review second Shantaram.

People, November 8, 2004, Amy Waldman, review of Shantaram, p. 57.

Publishers Weekly, June 23, 2003, John F. Baker, "Fiction Debut by Aussie Ex-Con," possessor. 14; August 23, 2004, Roger Gathman, "Man on the Run" (interview), proprietress. 36; August 23, 2004, review shambles Shantaram, p. 35.

Seattle Times, January 16, 2005, Valerie Ryan, "Junkie, Outlaw, Rescuer, Author: Shantaram Is a True Epic."

Telegraph (London, England), June 28, 2004, Apostle Ness, "Among the Bombay Mafia," analysis of Shantaram.

USA Today, November 17, 2004, Rati Bishnoi, "Shantaram Weaves a Unique of Bombay's Unique Underworld."

ONLINE

BookLoons, http://www.bookloons.com/ (June 18, 2005), Barbara Lingens, review holdup Shantaram.

Laura Hird Web site, http://www.laurahird.com/ (June 18, 2005) Peter Murphy, "Letters munch through Hell: Gregory David Roberts" (interview).