"I had just graduated from college and had NO clue what I wanted to do with my life. I was working at a job that I hated and studying for the LSAT. A friend of mine had just told me about the year he spent in Nepal and India and the travel bug hit. Shantaram had been on my reading list after another friend recommended it to me more than a year earlier, and I finally got the nerve to dive into this massive book. I don't have a favourite passage, but the way Roberts wrote about India and his experiences was so romantic and over-the-top, I found myself reading and re-reading entire paragraphs and pages, just to enjoy the way he strung words together to make the most beautiful sentences.
His book inspired me to travel to Nepal and India for a few months. The trip itself was incredible — I got to visit his favourite cafe and talk to people who knew him — but it wasn't in itself life-changing. It was on this trip that I realised I probably shouldn't go to law school, so I would say reading this book set me on the path to save myself a lot of time and money and find the career path that was actually right for me." — Stacey Hersher, director, Social & Partnerships