Gregory David Roberts (GDR) is an Australian artist, composer, songwriter, and author of Shantaram, its sequel, The Mountain Shadow, and The Spiritual Path.

Following the breakdown of his marriage and the loss of custody of his daughter, he turned to heroin to numb the pain, and crime to feed his habit. In 1978, Roberts was sentenced to 19 years in prison for armed robbery (with a plastic weapon), he escaped and spent eight years in Bombay as a fugitive. Here he established a free medical clinic for slum-dwellers and worked as a counterfeiter and smuggler for a branch of the South Bombay mafia.

Recaptured and extradited to Australia, he served out his sentence, which included two years in solitary confinement as a punishment for his escape. The time in solitary was to become a turning ...Read More