Gregory John Peter Smith

The writer with a vivid and somewhat mystified biography of Gregory David Roberts has been called the Dostoevsky of the 21st century for his versatility and search for light among darkness. The prose writer has been compared to Ernest Hemingway for the richness of the books with exotic details and the glorification of strong personalities.

Information about the early years of the novelist is fragmentary and contradictory. It is known that Gregory George Peter Smith, which is how the future writer was named at birth, was born in Melbourne, Australia in June 1952.

Official biographers, after pointing to the personal data, immediately skip the crisis experienced by the novelist in his youth, when the divorce from his wife and the deprivation of custody of his daughter pushed him to drug use and antisocial behavior. However, in interviews, Gregory sometimes lifts the veil over his childhood and adolescence.

According to the writer, he was surrounded by his mother's love - the woman was interested in philosophy, the works of Socrates and Marcus Aurelius and introduced her son to them. The young man was fond of sports and fiction: he began to practice karate at the age of 12, boxing at 14, and rugby at 20, he received his first fee for the story at 16. According to Gregory, he created several student anarchist organizations, but there is no information about the education of the writer.

After the aforementioned family crisis, the future writer became addicted to heroin, and he obtained funds for drugs through robberies. Gregory tried to minimize the evil caused by his crimes: he only robbed organizations that insured property, used a toy pistol as a "weapon", and said "Thank you" and "Please" to the victims of robberies. For this, the robber received the nickname Gentleman Outlaw.

In 1978, Gregory was sentenced to a 19-year prison term, but after 2 years he managed to escape and fly through New Zealand to India, whose adventures are described in the novel Shantaram. The real details of the writer's biography are confused with episodes from the works, and it is not easy to figure out where the truth is and where the fiction is.

Gregory lived in the slums of Bombay and a small Indian village, mastered not only Hindi, but also the Marathi language. According to the writer, he earned the respect of both ordinary Bombays, having managed to organize a hospital for the urban poor, and the leaders of the mafia, fought in Afghanistan on the side of the Mujahideen. In 1990, Gregory was arrested in Frankfurt for attempting to smuggle heroin into Germany and sentenced to a terrorist prison.

In the Melbourne loner, the writer's spiritual rebirth began. Gregory heard how the inhabitant of the next cell, when taken out for a walk or in the shower, starts a fight with the guards every time and gets thrashed from the jailers. The future writer shouted to his neighbor that he would teach him meditation, and the criminal answered the offer with consent. Soon, other prisoners joined the spiritual practices, and suicide attempts and riots in the prison stopped.

The overseer, wishing to thank the initiator of the meditations, offered to grant Gregory's wish. The former "gangster gentleman" replied to the guard with a quote from Fyodor Dostoevsky:

The administration gave Gregory writing materials. Sowing down to write a novel, Smith, who took the pseudonym Roberts, soon abandoned attempts at escape and addictions, realizing that only after serving time and clearing himself of intoxicating substances, he could atone for his guilt before society and parents and bring people light.

Although the manuscript was destroyed twice by guards, the writer forgave the offenders. In 1997 Gregory David Roberts was released and continued work on Shantaram, which took 11 years to write.

Roberts' bibliography includes 2 novels, each of which the writer spent 11-12 years to write. "Shadow of the Mountain", which is a continuation of "Shantaram", came to the Russian-speaking writer much faster than the first book published in English in 2003, and in the language of Pushkin and Tolstoy only in 2010.

The title of each of the works refers the reader to Indian idioms - "Shantaram" means "peaceful man" (this is the nickname given to the main character - the fugitive Australian prisoner Lindsay Ford (Lin) - the mother of his Indian friend Prabaker), and the Indians call the white man "Mountain".

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There are many characters in the books - Persians and Afghans, Jews and Palestinians, Italians and Nigerians living in Bombay. The most important heroes, besides Lin and Prabaker, are Shantaram's beloved - the mysterious Swiss Karla Saarnen, the head of the mafia - the cruel but wise Abdel Kader Khan, Lin's close friend - the mafioso Abdullah Taheri, and also the worker of an elite brothel - American Lisa Carter.

The writer claims that the events of the novel are authentic, and the characters are fictional. Explaining how this can be, Roberts says that he, like Lina, was brought to an Indian village by a guy named Prabaker, but unlike the beaming namesake from the novel, the real guide was gloomy and unsmiling.

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The idea of ​​each of the books is the opposition of sin and virtue. In Shantaram, the main vice is pride, and the main virtue is mercy. It is because of arrogance that heroes die physically or spiritually: Lin refuses love, considering Karla's proposal an ultimatum, and Kader Khan pays with his life for wanting to penetrate Afghanistan not on practical camels or donkeys, but on thoroughbred horses.

In "Shadow of the Mountain", the leading virtue is generosity, and the worst sin is greed. However, critics of the novels believe that the author's morality is very vague and is a symbiosis of Christian ethics, the romanticization of criminals and Indian ideas of kindness. For example, Prabaker explains to Lin and his readers that pimps who recruit children for prostitution are doing well: if the guys sell their bodies, they will starve to death.

Gregory's personal life was covered by journalists for a decade after the publication of the novel "Shantaram". In the photo of those years, Roberts appeared to be a youngish thin man of tall stature with a braided pigtail.

In the frame, the writer was either sitting on an expensive motorcycle, or standing next to an interesting blonde, whom he introduced as his bride Françoise Steurds. The woman was the president of the Hope for India charity foundation, and Gregory was an employee of this organization. According to the writer, his chosen one is the former wife of the heir to the Romanian throne.

Also from the words of Roberts it followed that he lives in an elite hotel in Bombay, is friends with Madonna and Johnny Depp, who is going to film "Shantaram", does not smoke, does not drink alcohol and does not use drugs. The writer said that he had improved relations with his daughter, and helped the Indians by distributing generous tips to the servants and food to the poor, by creating the Happy Bicycles workshops, in which former bandits and outcasts could earn money through honest labor.

In 2014, the author announced that he was leaving public life, believing that he did not have time for interviews and signing autographs. What is happening with Gregory now is unknown: there are no photos of the man on Instagram.

In 2019, in connection with the long-awaited premiere of the film adaptation of "Shantaram", interest in the fate and work of Roberts is noted. The American film was directed and played by Amitabh Bachchan.

2003 - "Shantaram" 2015 - "Shadow of the Mountain"

Gregory John Peter Smith 's estimated Net Worth, Salary, Income, Cars, Lifestyles & many more details have been updated below.

Let's check, How Rich is Gregory John Peter Smith in 2021?

Gregory John Peter Smith Net Worth 2022

Gregory John Peter Smith 's revenue is $1.3M in 2022. It is an approximate forecast of how rich is Gregory John Peter Smith and could vary in the range between $962.8K - $1.3M.

Gregory John Peter Smith Net Worth 2021

Gregory John Peter Smith 's revenue is $1.9M in 2021. It is an approximate forecast of how rich is Gregory John Peter Smith and could vary in the range between $656.4K - $1.6M.

Gregory John Peter Smith Net Worth 2020

Gregory John Peter Smith 's revenue is $1.4M in 2020. It is an approximate forecast of how rich is Gregory John Peter Smith and could vary in the range between $896.5K - $1.2M.

Gregory John Peter Smith Net Worth 2019

Gregory John Peter Smith 's revenue is $1.1M in 2019. It is an approximate forecast of how rich is Gregory John Peter Smith and could vary in the range between $504.3K - $1.8M.

Gregory John Peter Smith Net Worth 2018

Gregory John Peter Smith 's revenue is $1.6M in 2018. It is an approximate forecast of how rich is Gregory John Peter Smith and could vary in the range between $542.4K - $1.6M.

Gregory John Peter Smith Net Worth 2017

Gregory John Peter Smith 's revenue is $1.2M in 2017. It is an approximate forecast of how rich is Gregory John Peter Smith and could vary in the range between $839K - $1.4M.

Gregory John Peter Smith Net Worth 2016

Gregory John Peter Smith 's revenue is $1.4M in 2016. It is an approximate forecast of how rich is Gregory John Peter Smith and could vary in the range between $605.4K - $1.4M.

It is an overall forecast for the net worth of Gregory John Peter Smith. The evaluation covers the latest 5 years and an approximation for next year. See above to learn how much money does Gregory John Peter Smith makes a year.

The range above shows an estimation based on evaluation generated by public information about sponsorships or other sources found on the internet. It's summarized data from Gregory John Peter Smith's projects existing in AidWiki's repository. It's an approximation of the revenue compiled by AidWiki and may not correspond with the real amount.