People Magazine - Critic's Choice: "In the spirit of Charles Dickens, Roberts (who wrote the novel after he was rearrested in 1990 and sent to serve the remaining seven years of his sentence) has created an expansive work, encompassing a large and disparate cast of characters, subjects and situations....inspired storytelling."

Pat Conroy: "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, every thing 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." -

Publishers Weekly: "A sensational read."

The Washington Post Book World: “[A] sprawling, intelligent novel…full of vibrant characters…the exuberance of his prose is refreshing…Roberts brings us through Bombay’s slums and opium houses, its prostitution dens and ex-pat bars, saying, You come now. And we follow.”