Gregory David Roberts
Encyclopedia
Gregory David Roberts (born Gregory John Peter Smith) is an Australian author best known for his novel Shantaram
Shantaram (novel)
Shantaram is a 2003 novel by Gregory David Roberts, in which a convicted Australian bank robber and heroin addict who escaped from Pentridge Prison flees to India where he lives for 10 years...

. He is a former heroin addict and convicted bank robber who escaped from Pentridge Prison in 1980, and fled to India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

 where he lived for ten years.

Life

Roberts had become addicted to heroin after his marriage ended, and he lost custody of his young daughter. In his efforts to finance his drug habit, Roberts became known as the "Building Society Bandit" and the "Gentleman Bandit", because he had chosen to rob only institutions with adequate insurance, he would wear a three-piece suit, and he always said "please" and "thank you" to the people he robbed. Roberts believed at the time that in this way he was lessening the brutality of his acts, but later in his life he admitted that people only gave him money because he had made them afraid. He escaped from Pentridge Prison in 1980.

In 1990, Roberts was captured in Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...

 after being caught smuggling heroin into the country. He was extradited to Australia and served a further six years in prison, two of which were spent in solitary confinement. According to Roberts, he escaped prison again during that time, but then he relented and smuggled himself back into jail. His intention was to serve the rest of his sentence to give himself the chance to be reunited with his family. During his second stay in Australian prison, Roberts began writing the novel Shantaram. The manuscript was destroyed by prison wardens, twice, while Roberts was writing it.

Writing career

After leaving prison, Roberts was able to finally finish and publish his novel, Shantaram
Shantaram (novel)
Shantaram is a 2003 novel by Gregory David Roberts, in which a convicted Australian bank robber and heroin addict who escaped from Pentridge Prison flees to India where he lives for 10 years...

. The book's name comes from the name his best friend's mother gave him, which means "Man of Peace," or "Man of God's Peace." There is debate as to how much of Shantaram is based on true events or is a conflation of real life and fantasy.

Roberts lived in Melbourne, Germany, and France and finally returned to Mumbai, where he set up charitable foundations to assist the city's poor with health care coverage. He was finally reunited with his daughter. He got engaged to Francoise Sturdza, who is the president of the Hope for India Foundation. Roberts also wrote the original screenplay for the movie adaptation of Shantaram.

In 2009, Roberts was named an Zeitz Foundation
Zeitz Foundation
The Zeitz Foundation is a non-profit organization registered in Germany and headquartered in Kenya with representation in the United States and the United Kingdom...

 Ambassador for Community. Ambassadors help raise awareness and shape activities in their respective dimension.

External links

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