Shantaram

by Gregory David Roberts

And it’s these – shame and dishonour, guilt and regret – that are the eyes through which Lin, the protagonist in Shantaram, looks at the world he discovers in Bombay. He was a man of honour, a warrior, who then committed cowardly crimes that harmed others, and by doing so he ruined the temple in his heart. In escaping from prison he rediscovered his courage and his will to live. His journey to Bombay, his struggle there to love and to be loved in return, and his drag-footed walk along the shoreline of his Fate are the fragments of his shipwreck survival. But the magnificent and terrible truth about honour – the thing that makes it, like love and freedom, the glory of our species and the theme of our sagas – is that once it’s lost, it can never be retrieved. No greater burden of dread or regret, that tough, honest Bombay cop said, and I think he was right, but he might have added than to lose your honour and yet be a warrior still.