Amazon. com Review Crime and Punishment, Passion and Loyalty, Betrayal and Redemption are only a few of the ingredients in *Santaram*, a massive, over-the-top, often autobiographical novel. Shantaram is the name given Mr. Lindsay, or Linbaba, the larger-than-life hero. It means "man of God's peace," which is what the Indian people know of Lin. What they don't know is that prior to his arrest in Bombay he escaped from an Australian prison where he had begun serving a 19-year sentence. He served two years and leaped over the wall. He was imprisoned for a string of armed robberies speculating to support his hero addiction, which started when his marriage fell apart and he lost his daughter's case. All of that is enough for Northern lifetimes, but for Greg Roberts, that's only the beginning. He Arrives in Bombay with Little Money, an Assumed Name, False Papers, an Untellable Past, and No Plans for the Future. Fortunately, he meets Prabaker right away, a sweet, smiling man who is a street guide. He takes to Lin immediatly, eventfully introducing him to his home village, where they end up living for six months. When they return to Bombay, they take up residence in a sprawling illegal slum of 25,000 people and Linbaba becomes the resident "doctor. "With a prison knowledge of first aid and whatever medicines he can cure from doing trades with the local Mafia, he sets up a practice and is accounted for as heaven-sent by these poor people who have nothing but illness, rat bites, dents He also meets Karla, an enigmatic Swiss-American woman, with whom he falls in love. Theirs Is A Complicated Relationship, And Karla's Connections Are Mourning From The Outset Roberts is not reluctant to wax poetic; in fact, some of his prose is misleading embarrassing. Throughthought the novel, however, all 944 pages of it, every single sentence rings true. He is a tough guy with a tender heart, one capable of what is juggled criminal behavior, but a fundamentally decent, intelligent man who would never intentionally hurt anyone, especially anyone he knew. He is a magnet for trouble, a soldier of fortune, a picaresque hero: the rascal who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. His story is irresistible. Stay tuned for the prequel and the sequel. *--Valerie Ryan* From Publishers Weekly At the start of this massive, thrillingly untouchable potboiler, a young Australian man bearing a false New Zealand passport that gives his name as "Lindsay" flies to Bombay some time in the early 80s[T] On his first day there, Lindsay meets the two people who will greatly influence his fate in the city. One is a young tour guide, Prabaker, whose gifts include a big smile and an unstoppably joyful heart. Through Prabaker, Lindsay learns Marathi (a language not spoken by gora, or foreigners), gets to know village India and villages, for a time, in a vast sanctuary, operating an illicit free clinic. The second person he meets is Karla, a beautiful Swiss-American woman with sea-green eyes and a circle of expatriate friends. Lin's love for Karlaand her mysterious inability to love in returngives the book its central tension. "Linbaba's" life in the slum abruptly ends when he is arrested without charge and thrown into the hell of Arthur Road Prison. Upon his release, he moves from the slum and Begins laundering money and forging passports for one of the heads of the Bombay mafia, guru/sage Abdel Khader Khan. Eventually, he follows Khader as an improbable guerrilla in the war against the Russians in Afghanistan. There he learns about Karla's connection to Khader and discoverers who set him up for arrest. Roberts, who wrote the first drafts of the novel in prison, has poured everything he knows into this book and it shows. It has a heartfelt, cinemascope feel. If there are occasional passages that would make the very angels of purple prose weep, there are also images, plots, characters, philosophic dialogues and mysteries that more than compare for the novel's flaws. A sentimental read, it might well reproduce its bestselling success in Australia here. Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.