The Siege Of Krishnapur: Winner of the Booker Prize (W&N Essentials)

Product Information

After World War II, the Farrells moved to Dublin, and from this point on Farrell spent much time in Ireland: this, perhaps combined with the popularity of Troubles, leads many to treat him as an Irish writer. After leaving Rossall, he taught in Dublin and also worked for some time on Distant Early Warning Line in the Canadian Arctic. Reading J.G. Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur is a good reminder that humor can be an extremely effective way of delivering a lesson or making a point. Sometimes, in fact, it can be the best way, because you find your way to the conclusion without even trying. The siege of Krishnapur grew on me very slowly. The cast of characters just like in ‘Troubles’ - the first part of J. G. Farrell’s Empire trilogy - is composed of humorous, tedious or simply odd individuals. As the story progresses and the residency is placed under siege, we watch them all in the face of an ordeal. The red-whiskered Collector, the very not likable Magistrate, in an unfortunate position of judge of the residency’s own poetry nights, all the fine ladies, the two doctors, the idealistic Fleury and the Rajas son Harry, with his thirst for knowledge and modernity. May I always accept Papa’s decisions with a good heart, without seeking to oppose them with my will.’...This dutiful phrase had surprised him. It had never occurred to him that either of the girls had a will…” Dusty British ghost towns and neglected cemeteries evoke the loss of empire after independence in 1947. The rebellion in 1857 had ended Company rule and land was passed to the Crown. Farrell traveled to locations in Calcutta and along the Ganges watershed to prepare for this book. There is a sense of authenticity. The story focuses on the British; Indians are seen primarily as shadowy servants or sepoy rebels. They stand in startling contrast to a pretentious alien culture.

By capitalising the word ‘Progress,’ Farrell clearly questions the Euro-centric conception of that word. However, the only possible character in the book that could have opposed this conception, the Maharaja, has been shown as a shallow, unintelligent man. The book similarly questions the superiority of Western ideas around ‘civilization’ many times but neither the narrator nor any of the characters provide concrete, well-formed arguments in favor of the natives. Farrell never tells us why the Western way shouldn’t be thought of as inherently better. His work relies on the reader to figure that out for themselves. In the 1984 novel Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie, Vinnie Miner, the protagonist, reads a Farrell novel on her flight from New York to London. In the 1991 novel The Gates of Ivory by Margaret Drabble, the writer Stephen Cox is modelled on Farrell. So last night my baby grabbed this book off my nightstand where it's been moldering for a month and ran around the room with it, shrieking, until the cover was crumpled and the bookmark had fallen out and got stomped on the floor. Dunstaple is married with a son and daughter. His daughter, Kate, is the heroine (if there is a heroine). She is initially attracted to dashing officers before taking an interest in the effete poet, once he proves not be entirely effete. Her brother is a dashing officer, Lieutenant Harry Dunstaple, and is fairly stereotypical. As you might have noticed, all the people I’ve mentioned are British. That’s because – with a single exception – Farrell tells this story solely from that perspective. In the introduction, the writer Pankaj Mishra speculates that Farrell simply didn’t feel comfortable attempting to inhabit an Indian character. Whether or not that is true, this authorial decision is not fatal. To the contrary, I thought it reinforced the overall thrust of the novel, which is that the British were clueless, overbearing, self-deluded masters. The Indians in The Siege of Krishnapur are vaguely defined “others” because that is how the British saw them.

He is buried in the cemetery of St. James's Church of Ireland in Durrus. The manuscript library at Trinity College, Dublin holds his papers: Papers of James Gordon Farrell (1935–1979). TCD MSS 9128-60.

Troubles received the 1971 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and The Siege of Krishnapur received the 1973 Booker Prize. In 2010 Troubles was retrospectively awarded the Lost Man Booker Prize, created to recognise works published in 1970. Troubles and its fellow shortlisted works had not been open for consideration that year due to a change in the eligibility rules.We look on past ages with condescension, as a mere preparation for us....but what if we are a mere after-glow of them?

Ronald Binns described Farrell's colonial novels as "probably the most ambitious literary project conceived and executed by any British novelist in the 1970s."And J.G. Farrell is capable to portray even the darkest moments of the story without losing his sharp and intelligent irony… Fleury continues to pontificate: It’s wrong to talk of a ‘superior civilisation’ because there isn’t such a thing. All civilisation is bad. It mars the noble and natural instincts of the heart. Civilisation is decadence! The Padre, even as bullets are flying around his head, tries to defend the work of the Lord. The British have a tea party without any tea – traditions must go on. Food runs out and people both hoard it and then sell it off at high prices, till the Collector intervenes.