I filched this from the author’s website:

Q. When did the idea of an autobiography, with the city both as a character and as a backdrop, first strike you?

A. With respect, Shantaram is not an autobiography, it’s a novel. If the book reads like an autobiography, I take that as a very high compliment, because I structured the created narrative to read like fiction but feel like fact. I wanted the novel to have the page-turning drive of a work of fiction but to be informed by such a powerful stream of real experience that it had the authentic feel of fact.

Also, from a bbc story:”Roberts admits that the novel very closely mirrors his own extraordinary life.”

I suspect it’s liberally embellished truth.

Apparently, Johnny Depp is going to play the main character in the film version…