The Mountain Shadow - by Gregory David Roberts (Paperback)

About the Book

A breath of Bombay hope, in the first glimpse of the sea, on Marine Drive, filled my heart, if not my head. I turned away from the red shadow. I stopped thinking of that pyramid of killers, and Sanjay's recklessness. I stopped thinking about my own part in the madness. And I rode, with my friends, into the end of everything.' The end of the eighties was the beginning of everything. The Berlin wall fell on a ruined empire, and the Taliban took Afghanistan. Lin, on the run after escaping from prison in Australia, working as a passport forger for a Bombay mafia gang, finds himself standing on a tattered corner of a bloody carpet that would soon cover most of the world. But he can't leave the Island City: not without Karla. Two years after the events in Shantaram, Bombay is a different world, playing by different rules. Lin's search for love and faith leads him through secret and violent intrigues to the dangerous truth.

Book Synopsis

Shantaram, now a major television series from Apple TV+ starring Charlie Hunnam, introduced millions of readers to a cast of unforgettable characters through Lin, an Australian fugitive, working as a passport forger for a branch of the Bombay mafia. In The Mountain Shadow, the long-awaited sequel, Lin must find his way in a Bombay run by a different generation of mafia dons, playing by a different set of rules.
It has been two years since the events in Shantaram, and since Lin lost two people he had come to love: his father figure, Khaderbhai, and his soul mate, Karla, married to a handsome Indian media tycoon. Lin returns from a smuggling trip to a city that seems to have changed too much, too soon. Many of his old friends are long gone, the new mafia leadership has become entangled in increasingly violent and dangerous intrigues, and a fabled holy man challenges everything that Lin thought he'd learned about love and life. But Lin can't leave the Island City: Karla, and a fatal promise, won't let him go.

Review Quotes

Praise for The Mountain Shadow:

"Roberts is brilliant at creating a sense of menace and projecting the constant tension of the escaped convict, living on his wits, waiting to be murdered or betrayed at any moment . . . Crucially, he is also a man who loves and understands India . . . Nearly 900 pages of pure escape."--Sunday Times (UK)

"Roberts's sequel to Shantaram defies easy categorization, one of its many charms. The dashing hero Lin, an Australian fugitive, is worldly, two-fisted, rides a motorcycle, has a social conscience, quotes great writers and, as the book opens, struggles bravely to get over his lost love, Karla . . . He narrates his interactions with many larger-than-life street types in an energetic and often salty first person . . . . Roberts keeps the action moving and the narrative engaging . . . This series of robust, retro capers with contemporary trappings will have readers feverishly turning the pages."--Publishers Weekly

"The first book was a hit, and this volume will follow suit."--Library Journal

Praise for Shantaram:

"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, everything 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

"Shantaram has provided me with the richest reading experience to date . . . It is seductive, powerful, complex, and blessed with a perfect voice. Like a voodoo ghost snatcher, Gregory David Roberts has captured the spirits of the likes of Henri Charrière, Rohinton Mistry, Tom Wolfe, and Mario Vargas Llosa, fused them with his own unique magic, and built the most gripping monument in print . . . Gregory David Roberts is a suitable giant, a dazzling guru, and a genius in full."--Moses Isegawa, author of Abyssinian Chronicles and Snakepit