Recommend: Yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A sprawling epic of 900 pages that is based, incredibly, on a true story of a criminal escaping an Australian jail and ending up in Bombay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I knew nothing about this book going in other than it was a strong recommendation from a person I know through work. I would have never picked it up for myself, due to the ‘true story’ categorisation and for fear of its hefty girth, which is the perfect type of recommendation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Having finally completed the book over a duration of six months, I second this as a recommendation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The story is outrageous. The pacing is close to perfection – a feat for a book of this length. The writing style can get a little purple prose in places but it would only be for a page or two every hundred pages. There are some pretty funny sections too. A real success of a book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s very much a book that can be read for a few chapters and put down again. There’s so much to get out of it at every point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I finished it while travelling in South East Asia. As stressful as that can be, Shantaram did serve as a helpful reminder that at least I am not being subjected to the chaos of India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
[Brevity of review due to holiday in SEA]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The impression was of a plodding, indefatigable, and distant past that had crashed intact, through barriers of time, into its own future. I liked it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1692,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews_books","category-recommended_cait"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1693"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1837,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1693\/revisions\/1837"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}