So we begin the top ten countdown in this series, and I start it off with a great one. Shantaram: A Novel by Gregory David Roberts is simply brilliant. It might be my favorite novel on the list, and it might be the wisest book of fiction that I have read.
Of course, it’s not entirely a book of fiction. The parallels between the author’s life and Lin’s life (the main character) are very similar. So where does the truth begin and fiction begin? Like everything else about this book, it’s living on the edges and learning to cope with the ambiguities of life.
At the risk of some kind of copyright law infringement, I’m going to reprint the opening paragraph of Shantaram because it is just so incredibly good:
“It took 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 realized, 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.”
Wow. And that’s just the first paragraph. It goes on like that for 944 more pages.
Okay, so I could go on and on about the storyline here. It’s fascinating and brilliant, and the human insights are amazing.
But why does it make the list of the 25 books that most influenced my life?
Because it put to words something I’ve long known but couldn’t always express: the reality that we live in ambiguity. True life does not happen in the black and white. It’s the nuances of timing, the tensions of moralities, the contradictions of our decisions, and the counterintuitive truths of this thing we call “life” that make it all so incredibly interesting.
Shantaram, whether intentionally or unintentionally, captures that beautifully. The freedom that Lin discovers in that moment of torture is itself an expression of our tension in life; how else can you understand the discovery of freedom in the midst of torture?
I’ve never been tortured. I’ve never been a drug addict. I’ve never broken out of prison, moved to India, lived in a slum, fought the Russians in Afghanistan, or joined organized crime.
But I do understand how the tensions and contradictions of our lives create the interesting moments that make life worth living. So does Gregory David Roberts and his character Lin. And though I intuitively understood this before reading Shantaram, and though Lin never explicitely says life is worth living in the tension, it all came together for me as I flipped through page after page of this mesmerizing story.
This is not an easy book to read. It is often filled with moral ambiguity and despicable behavior. But it is also filled with hope, love, and forgiveness. Which, like everything else of interest around us, is what creates the tension.
And for that reason, Shantaram makes my list of 25 books that most influenced my life.
Want to read more of my top 25? Here is the list thus far:
Celebration of Discipline – #1
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings – #2
The Cost of Discipleship – #3
The Screwtape Letters – #4
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – #5
Only the Paranoid Survive – #6
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold – #7
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – #8
Truman – #9
Shantaram – #10
The Maltese Falcon – #11
The Shadow of the Wind – #12
Survey of the New Testament – #13
Calvin & Hobbes – #14
Celtic Daily Prayer – #15
Managing the Nonprofit Organization – #16
A Wrinkle in Time – #17
The Practice of the Presence of God – #18
Catch 22 – #19
The Tortilla Curtain – #20
The Kingdom of God is a Party – #21
Earthkeeping – #22
Reviving Ophelia – #23
The Grapes of Wrath – #24
Peanuts – #25