Australian writer Gregory David Roberts penned his 2003 novel Shantaram from a jail cell. According to Roberts, his first two drafts of the novel were written over a period of six years and destroyed in prison. The novel, which the author is very clear to label as fiction, is loosely based on his real-life experience as a heroin addict and bank robber who escaped from prison in Australia during the 1980s and ran away to Bombay, India. In Bombay, Roberts established a medical clinic for people living in a slum and worked for a branch of the Bombay mafia—as did Lin, the protagonist of Shantaram.
The book has received mixed reviews, with some criticizing its sprawling structure and...
