According to the author's notes on the Shantaram website, all characters in the book were fictional. This naturally means that Karla from Shantaram was not based on a real person.
He became well known as the Gentleman Bandit, or the Building Society Bandit. This was because he chose to only rob institutions that had adequate insurance. He earned the name Gentleman Bandit because he never failed to say please or thank you during his robberies.
After being caught and jailed, he escaped from the prison in Pentridge, Australia in 1980. After he was caught smuggling heroin into Germany in 1990, authorities extradited him to Australia, where he served another six year prison sentence. Roberts spent two years in solitary confinement while there.
During his time in this prison, Roberts started to write Shantaram, but wardens twice destroyed the manuscript while he was writing it. He finally finished the novel and published it after being released from prison. The name Shantaram was given to him by the mother of his best friend and means Man of God's Peace.
- The Facts of Shantaram
- Fiction
- The Author
He became well known as the Gentleman Bandit, or the Building Society Bandit. This was because he chose to only rob institutions that had adequate insurance. He earned the name Gentleman Bandit because he never failed to say please or thank you during his robberies.
After being caught and jailed, he escaped from the prison in Pentridge, Australia in 1980. After he was caught smuggling heroin into Germany in 1990, authorities extradited him to Australia, where he served another six year prison sentence. Roberts spent two years in solitary confinement while there.
During his time in this prison, Roberts started to write Shantaram, but wardens twice destroyed the manuscript while he was writing it. He finally finished the novel and published it after being released from prison. The name Shantaram was given to him by the mother of his best friend and means Man of God's Peace.