Hey, kids! Welcome back to the Book Report. And happy St. Patrick’s Day! Go do something fun and slightly irresponsible.
Before we go anywhere, I would be most remiss (and probably in trouble) if I didn’t mention the new Mythoi: Birth that came out Monday, featuring Taros. I strongly urge you to give it a read, and if you haven’t read any of the others, you really should. It’s good stuff.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

One literary genre that I’ve yet to mention is the roman à clef (French: “novel with a key”). This genre might be more recognized by the name “Faction”, a novel which describes real life, under a façade of fiction.
The upcoming film The Ghost Writer is based on such a novel, titled The Ghost by Robert Harris, where the author is hired to ghost write the memoirs of a former Prime Minister named Adam Lang (ie. Tony Blair) and uncovers details that may imply the Prime Minister is guilty of war crimes.

Why does a child molester have to make movies that look so interesting?

Other roman à clefs include The Devil Wears Prada, Primary Colors, The Things They Carried, Postcards From the Edge, A Scanner Darkly, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Bell Jar, the novels of Jack Kerouac and Lara Ingalls Wilder, The Sun Also Rises, and The Picture of Dorian Grey.

The particular roman à clef I wish to cover for Semantink is called Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts. Roberts readily admits that he combined people to create characters, and that he invented other characters and events to help the plot or theme come together as a novel, but the basic plot elements of the book and of his life are more or less the same.
After losing his wife and daughter in a divorce, Roberts turned to heroin for comfort. To feed his addiction, he committed a string of robberies using a fake gun. When he was finally caught, he was sentenced to nineteen years in prison. He escaped, in broad daylight, and began his life as a fugitive. All this happened (to the character and the author) before the book even begins.
The book covers much of his life as a fugitive in Bombay (now called Mumbai), India. Just reading the author synopsis intrigued me enough to open the book, and after reading the first page I knew I had to finish. It’s that kind of book. Hell, I was hooked after reading the first paragraph.

“It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realised, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you’ve got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.”

What follows is a wonderful, heart-wrenching, (and at almost 1000 pages, epic) story of love and hate and forgiveness. A story so fantastic, it is difficult to believe that much of it really happened.
Roberts has two additional novels, a prequel and sequel, planned. Johnny Depp loved the book so much he convinced the studio executives at Warner Bros. to buy the movie rights, with the film expected to come out sometime in 2011.

That’s it for me on this particular Wednesday.
Until next time,

Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_