Why is "Shantaram" the best seller of all time?
Gregory David Roberts' novel "Shantaram" without exaggeration can be called a real sensation in the book world. This work is the head of all the lists of bestsellers and a total of 6 million copies dispersed. Today it is compared to the masterpieces of the best writers of the new time, from Bradbury to Hemingway. According to Readrate (based on the reader's choice of millions of users of PocketBook readers), Shantaram is in second place after 451 degrees Fahrenheit and is ahead of such cult books as Above the Rye Abyss, Portrait of Dorian Gray, Three Comrades, and Fighting Club.
The novel is an adventurous confession of a former junkie who was imprisoned and escaped to India, where he has to literally survive, falling to the bottom. It is hard to believe that one person could have had so many similarities, wanderings, and trials. The love of the readers has won the friendliness and openness of the protagonist, who quickly makes friends and acquaintances in India, and his closest friend's mother calls him Shantaram.
The book has a piercing, dynamic narrative that is closely intertwined with the spiritual transformations, philosophical statements, wisdom and aphorisms of the heroes, inspiring acceptance of what is happening as it is.
TEN FACTS ABOUT THE "SHANTARAM"
1. The novel is an autobiography of Gregory David Roberts about his 10-year stay in the Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay) in the 80s. The author wrote the book during his second time in a maximum-security prison in Australia.
3. Roberts had to start writing the book three times from the beginning, as the manuscripts were destroyed twice by prison guards.
4. The word "Shantaram" means "peaceful man" or "a man to whom God gave a peaceful fate", which is a kind of philosophical irony, as the fate of the main character is sometimes difficult and even tragic.
5. All the characters of the novel are fictional, but the events described are real. Thus, in Mumbai, there is a cafe "Leopold" with marble halls, there is indeed a Bollywood film "Paanch Papi", in which the main character appears (and it is easy to recognize the writer himself). Also in the city, you can find yourself in the slums where Gregory David Roberts lived and see Rukhmabai, the woman who gave him the name Shantaram.
6. Anonymous Content and Paramount Television will be shooting the series "Shantaram", which was met by Roberts with great joy. According to him, television is the ideal environment for his book.
7. After his imprisonment, the writer lived in Australia (Melbourne), Germany and France, but still returned to India, Mumbai. There he founded a charity foundation to help and care for the poor.
8. In 2015, the second part of the novel was published - Roberts wrote the continuation of his adventures in the book "The Shadow of the Mountain".
9. Many book and Travel bloggers believe that reading "Shantaram" is the most immediate immersion in real India.
10. Today, Mumbai is home to the Shantarama, where tourists are invited to visit the most picturesque places in the city, from slums to luxury hotels.
QUOTES FROM THE BOOK:
"One Mujahedeen warrior once told me that fate gives us three teachers, three friends, three enemies and three great loves in our lives. But all twelve appear in other guises, and we will never recognize them until we fall in love, abandon and fight with them".
"The truth is that there are no good or bad people. Good and evil is not in people, but in their actions. People are just people, and they are connected with good or evil by what they do - or refuse to do. The truth is that in one moment of true love, in the heart of any man - the most noble of all, and the most lost - is, as in a cup of lotus, the whole life, its entire meaning, content, and purpose. The truth is that we all - each of us, each atom, each galaxy and each particle of matter in the universe - are moving towards God".
"A man becomes a man only after he gains the love of a woman, deserves her respect and keeps her trust, and without that he is not a man".
"The only kingdom that makes a man king is the kingdom of his soul. The only force that has some real meaning is the force that can improve the world".