Shantaram: So I took each sadness she confessed to me, and pinned it to the sky.

As soon as I finished reading Shantaram I wanted to start all over again. I knew that there was so much wisdom I had failed to absorb, and so much I had failed to understand. And now they are making a movie, and while it is to star the wondrous Jonny Depp, I know that the beauty will be diluted and much of the message will be lost in the translation. So I urge you, dear readers, to read this book before the hype begins, and you end up going to see the film, and this experience is lost to you.

Here are a couple of extracts from Gregory David Roberts' masterpiece, to whet your appetite:

"I let the raining silence close her eyes for the last time. She slept. I knew we did not have her story. Not the whole of it. I knew the small daubs of colour she'd excluded from her summary were at least as important as the broad strokes she'd included. The devil, they say, is in the details, and I knew well the devils that lurked and skulked in the details of my own story. But she had given me a hoard of new treasures. I'd learned more about her in that exhausted, murmuring hour than in all the many months before it. Lovers find their way by such insights and confidences: they're the stars we use to navigate the ocean of desire. And the brightest of those stars are the heartbreaks and sorrows. The most precious gift you can bring to your lover is your suffering. So I took each sadness she confessed to me, and pinned it to the sky."

"...no man is saved without love. What characterises the human race more, Karla once asked me, cruelty or the capacity to feel shame for it? I thought the question acutely clever then, when I first heard it, but I'm lonelier and wiser now, and I know it isn't cruelty or shame that characterises the human race. It's forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species would've annihilated itself in endless retributions. Without forgiveness, there would be no history. Without that hope, there would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without that dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive."

The whole book is not only reflections on existence, although his perceptions of the human condition particularly resonated with me. The narrative is vast and complex, filled with action, incredible characters and Roberts manages to give you a strong sensory insight into India - the sights, the sounds, the smells, the very feel of it. If you read only one book this year, let Shantaram be it.