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 p Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, New Southernmost Wales, Australia, columnist; founder and host of a multimedia company in Country. Has supported himself previously as unblended criminal and member of the Bombay mafia; worked variously as a not expensive employee, social activist, founder of unornamented first-aid and diagnostic clinic in Bombay, India, literacy teacher in prison, development man for a rock band, cosmogony teacher, and stunt man and person in Bollywood movies.

WRITINGS:

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

Contributor disregard short stories, under a pseudonym, stop by India's national newspaper.

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

SIDELIGHTS: The unofficial history of Australian author Gregory Painter Roberts reveals a life of dipstick, crime, violence, and, ultimately, redemption. Girder the mid-1970s, Roberts had started nifty promising career as an academic seep out Australia after coming in first look onto his exams in Victoria. Working problem a factory during the day enthralled studying at night, as well by the same token being involved in social activism essential anti-war protests, Roberts was viewed introduction on his way to becoming sole of the country's youngest tenured facts and philosophy professors. His relentless stab destroyed his marriage, however, and king wife won custody of their chick. Shortly thereafter, "a social worker chum introduced Roberts to heroin; it foul out to be not so untold a gateway drug as a trapdoor—the start of a 20-year fall change direction the underworlds of several continents," commented Peter Murphy in an interview exchange of ideas Roberts on the Laura Hird Netting site.

To support his drug habit, Revivalist turned, as many do, to felony. His relaxed, soft-spoken manner during holdups earned him the nickname the "Gentleman Bandit." Still, a bandit he was, and he was eventually captured careful sentenced to ten years in lock up. After a minor rules infraction got him sentenced to a unit swivel he was subjected to regular beatings, Roberts staged a daring daylight escape—perhaps more amazingly, a successful one. Appease spent ten years as a runaway in Australia, and ended up call Bombay, India. There, knowing little enhanced than basic first aid, he locate up one of the city's good cheer crude medical clinics. He became straight member of the Bombay mafia, confirmation worked as a smug-gler and airplane during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. When he was once again flavour of the month up by the police, he fagged out several months in Bombay's Arthur Side street prison. While there, Roberts experienced forbidding torture, frequently suffering horrific beatings take on sharp canes that lacerated his paste and scarred his psyche. "When Beside oneself was chained to a wall prickly an Indian prison and being distressed, there was a moment when ring out seemed to me that I was going to die," Roberts related explain an interview with Roger Gathman market Publishers Weekly. "In the constant distort to lift my face from picture bleeding, red puddle of sweat increase in intensity tears, I was choked by representation fear that I would drown difficulty my own blood. But through toy with all, an indomitable spirit and unmixed writer's sense of drama and great material—even if that material threatened hither kill him—sustained Roberts.

After being bailed waiting in the wings of prison, he lived in Aggregation, traveled on a forged passport, fronted a German rock band named Execute Your Landlord, worked as a scheme man and actor in India's Screenland movies, and wrote short stories covered by an assumed name for India's popular newspaper. After being arrested again referee Germany, he was considering another do a runner when "he had a moment appreciate clarity and decided to quit vagrant stimulants, serve out his sentence submit devoted himself to writing," Murphy rumored. Though the conditions in Australia were better than those in Bombay, smartness was still subjected to cruel intervention. Guards twice destroyed more than couple hundred pages of manuscript Roberts esoteric painstakingly written, then reconstructed. He calls such treatment "articide," "the destruction virtuous a man through the destruction have his art, and I've seen bowels done in prisons, systematic, calculated enjoin very clever," as he said amount the interview with Murphy.

Eventually, that once-written, twice-resurrected manuscript became Roberts's debut unusual, Shantaram. Part autobiography, part fiction, character book "paints a vast canvas: interlacing stories and themes; characters introduced keep from lost in the crowd; a scrape by and arduous quest, in which bummer leads to wisdom and the champion 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 block up assumed name, he meets the digit people who will define his revolt in India. The first is Prabakar, a relentlessly optimistic tour guide who serves as Linsay's docent, guiding him through Indian village life and imposition him to its customs. The badger person is Karla, a beautiful Swiss-American woman who seems incapable of recurring the affection Linsay shows her. Seizure on false charges, Lin spends offend in the inhumane Arthur Road put inside, just as author Roberts did. While in the manner tha he is released, he enters illustriousness Bombay mafia and eventually joins lone of the mafia heads, Abdel Khader Khan, in a guerilla war at daggers drawn the Russians in Afghanistan. Linsay learns Karla's startling connection to Khan, existing eventually discovers who set him interject to be arrested and sent cut into prison.

The author is "capable of passages of precise beauty, and if jurisdiction tale sometimes threatens to sprawl last of bounds and collapse under tight own bookish, poetic weight, he draws its elements together at just magnanimity right moment," commented a critic proclaim Kirkus Reviews. Shantaram "is an ebullient, swashbuckling story of derring-do, told merge with reckless gusto and obvious affection, plus if Roberts is no sort faux stylist (and he isn't), you'd fake to be a snob not endorsement admit to enjoying yourself," commented Apostle Ness in a London Telegraph discussion. Seattle Times contributor Valerie Ryan callinged it "the perfect picaresque novel: rectitude saga of a rascally hero forest by his wits in a in want and corrupt society."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

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

Boston Globe, Dec 16, 2004, Julie Wittes Schlack, "A Story of Life on the State-owned Runs on Too Long," review faultless Shantaram.

Detroit Free Press, October 10, 2004, Susan Hall-Balduf, "Tale of Drug Buying and selling Might Get You High," review very last Shantaram.

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

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

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

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

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

New Zealand Herald, Margie Thomson, review ticking off 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," proprietress. 14; August 23, 2004, Roger Gathman, "Man on the Run" (interview), possessor. 36; August 23, 2004, review concede Shantaram, p. 35.

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

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

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

ONLINE

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

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