Shantaram

Melbourne: Scribe, 2003. First edition. original cloth, original dust jacket. Fine/Fine. FIRST EDITION, SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY ROBERTS ON THE TITLE PAGE: "May all those you love find the truth in you and be true to your love. November 2003 Gregory David Roberts" “In 1980, while serving a 19-year sentence for robbery in Australia, Roberts escaped from prison and fled to India, spending a decade on the lam before he was recaptured and extradited. As Australia's most wanted man -- or so he describes himself in this fictionalized account of his years in Bombay -- Roberts was a larger-than-life figure in his native country long before 'Shantaram' made him a best-selling author” (Megan O’Grady, The New York Times).


"Shantaram is a novel of the first order, a work of extraordinary art, a thing of exceptional beauty. If someone asked me what the book was about, I would have to say everything, every thing in the world. Gregory David Roberts does for Bombay what Lawrence Durrell did for Alexandria, what Melville did for the South Seas, and what Thoreau did for Walden Pond: He makes it an eternal player in the literature of the world” (Pat Conroy).


Melbourne: Scribe Publications, 2003. Thick octavo, original red cloth, original dust jacket. A fine copy.

Note: This rare Australian first edition, first issue (with "Scribe" not in parenthesis on rear jacket flap), precedes all other editions.