#000498
The Mountain Shadow
Gregory David Roberts
Gregory David Roberts's 2015 novel picks up the story of Lin — the escaped Australian convict turned forger and enforcer — roughly two years after *Shantaram* left off, dropping him back into the churn of 1980s Bombay. Waiting on a mysterious sealed envelope, mourning lost friends and a lost love, Lin drifts among gangsters, philosophers, artists and holy men while a war brews inside his mafia council. At nearly 900 pages it is enormous, digressive and openly sentimental, forever pausing so its narrator can deliver aphorisms about love, fate and truth. Readers who fell for the romance and menace of *Shantaram* will find the same intoxicating atmosphere; those allergic to guru-speak may find it a slog. It works best as a mood — the noise, heat and moral haze of the city — rather than a tightly plotted thriller.
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The author
Gregory David Roberts writes close to his own legend. A heroin addict who robbed a string of Melbourne building societies — earning the tabloid names the "Gentleman Bandit" and "Building Society Bandit" — he was sentenced in the late 1970s, escaped Melbourne's Pentridge Prison in 1980, and fled to Bombay, where he lived for years before being recaptured in 1990 and returned to serve out his term. He began Shantaram behind bars. Roberts insists his novels are fiction informed by experience rather than autobiography, and some who knew him in India have disputed how much he embellished.
The book
The Mountain Shadow is the long-delayed sequel to the 2003 word-of-mouth bestseller Shantaram, arriving after roughly a decade of anticipation. Lin runs passports and money for the Sanjay Company while searching for spiritual footing under the guidance of assorted mentors, as loyalties inside the crime council fracture.
How it has aged
Reviews were markedly cooler than for its predecessor. Critics praised the vivid sense of place but faulted the book's length, self-indulgence and relentless aphorizing, with several noting it might have been a third the size. Devotees of the first novel tend to forgive all that; newcomers should start with Shantaram.
For more context
Best read after Shantaram, and alongside the 2022 Apple TV+ series it inspired.
Sources
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Gregory David Roberts
- Publisher
- Grove Press
- Place of publication
- New York
- Year
- 2015
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Fiction
- Location
- Colorado
Places