🛕 Gregory David Roberts: Shantaram

Audiorecenze naprosto mimořádného románu, který je vedle skvěle namluvené anglické audioknihy naštěstí dostupný i v českém překladu jako Šántárám.

Viz také můj komentář v angličtině:

If you’d ask me today what’s the greatest novel of the 21st century, I’d be tempted to say it’s Shantaram, written by Gregory David Roberts in 2004.

The book, recommended to me by an old friend who praised it as one of the all-time best, took me completely by surprise.

It’s epic, monumental, smart, and unbound like, say, The Lord of the Rings or The Count of Monte Cristo.

I thought they don’t write books like these anymore! But here it was, an absolutely original piece of art.

The excellent English audiobook narrated by Humphrey Bower is 43 hours long (!!) but I could not get enough of it anyway. I just needed to take two week-long breaks to digest some unexpected, disturbing twists.

Set in India, Shantaram tells a story of a fugitive from Australia, who escapes to Mumbai with a false passport, little money, and has to find a foothold in a strange new environment…

That’s all I knew before reading the book, and I’m glad I didn’t know more, as it may have spoiled the surprise of how unparalleled the book is.

I would recommend the same to anybody else: Just get it and dive into it without hesitation.

So — is it *really* that great and unique?

I can’t be sure, since I’m still under its spell, a rather intoxicating influence.

I am only sure I haven’t read *anything* like Shantaram before. For me, it’s up there with all-time classics and some newer additions to the pantheon such as Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, or Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Problem trilogy.

If you read Shantaram, let me know how you liked it.

The End ❤