Troubles received the 1971 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and The Siege of Krishnapur received the 1973 Booker Prize. The three novels that he did leave are all in their different way extraordinary.' 'Had he not sadly died so young,” Salman Rushdie said in 2008, 'there is no question that he would today be one of the really major novelists of the English language. He gained prominence for a series of novels known as the Empire Trilogy ( Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur and The Singapore Grip), which deal with the political and human consequences of British colonial rule.įarrell's career abruptly ended when he drowned in Ireland at the age of 44, swept to his death in a storm. James Gordon Farrell was a Liverpool-born novelist of Irish descent. Awards-Booker Prize Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize Lost Man Booker Prize.This is the second book in Farrell's Empire Trilogy the first is Troubles (1970). With its many memorable characters, riveting battle scenes, and tragicomic appreciation of the ironies of history, this masterful novel-winner of the Booker Prize in 1973-will keep readers on the edge of their seats. In him, Farrell offers an unforgettable picture of a decent man enduring the death of his ideals. Especially interesting and sympathetic is the character of Mr Hopkins, the administrative head, or Collector, of Krishnapur.

Trapped in a dwindling number of buildings, subject to repeated attack, and suffering both from sickness and the oppressive heat of summer, the British community soon finds itself under threat from within, too, as the simple certainties of superiority and invulnerability that have sustained them and the British Empire begin to crumble.įarrell’s characters, from the local priest and doctor to the young men and women who have come east to make their fortune or marry, are shown responding to this challenge in unexpected ways. In Farrell’s novel, the British inhabitants of the fictional town of Krishnapur ignore rumors of unrest only to find themselves under siege by the rebels.

In 1857, Indian soldiers in the British army-known as sepoys-rebelled against their colonial overlords, and serious conflict broke out in the northern half of the subcontinent. Farrell’s picture of the British Empire in crisis raises questions with a bearing on contemporary conflicts between East and West. Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur is both a gripping tale of the siege of a remote British outpost during the Indian Mutiny of 1857 and a fascinating, and blisteringly comic novel of ideas.

The siege of krishnapur review