The Siege Of Krishnapur, J.G. Farrell
The Siege Of Krishnapur, J.G. Farrell
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The Siege Of Krishnapur
Winner of the Booker Prize

Author: J.G. Farrell

Narrator: Peter Wickham

Unabridged: 13 hr 1 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/14/2018

Synopsis

In the Spring of 1857, with India on the brink of a violent and bloody mutiny, Krishnapur is a remote town on the vast North Indian plain. For the British there, life is orderly and genteel. Then the sepoys at the nearest military cantonment rise in revolt and the British community retreats with shock into the Residency. They prepare to fight for their lives with what weapons they can muster. As food and ammunition grow short, the Residency, its defences battered by shot and shell and eroded by the rains, becomes ever more vulnerable.

The Siege of Krishnapur is a modern classic of narrative excitement that also digs deep to explore some fundamental questions of civilisation and life.

(p) Orion Publishing Group 2018

About J.G. Farrell

J.G. Farrell was born in Liverpool in 1935 and spent a good deal of his life abroad, including periods in France and North America, and then settled in London where he wrote most of his novels.Among his novels, TROUBLES won the Faber Memorial Prize in 1970 and the Lost Man Booker prize in 2010 and THE SIEGE OF KRISHNAPUR won the Booker Prize in 1973.In April 1979 he went to live in County Cork where only four months later he was drowned in a fishing accident.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Vit on April 03, 2025

The Siege of Krishnapur is a dark page in the colonial history… And very inventively and cunningly J.G. Farrell manages to turn his tale into a clash of idealism and materialism… What you and I object to is the emptiness of the life behind all these objects, their materialism in other words. Objects......more

Goodreads review by Michael on August 17, 2017

Fascinating look at what empire means, in its moral decay, as the "happy native" ideal begins to be stripped away and Britain is faced with violence in India--all told with biting humor and incisive prose. This is the middle book of a loose trilogy, beginning with Troubles (which I loved) and The Si......more

Goodreads review by William2 on December 12, 2016

A fictionalized account of the Indian Mutiny (1857), as the British call it, or the First War of Independence, as it's known in India. I agree with my GR friend Mark Monday who felt there was insufficient adventure here. We don't get any great battlefield set pieces, or much in the line of guerrilla......more

Goodreads review by Jibran on July 26, 2015

We look on past ages with condescension, as a mere preparation for us....but what if we are a mere after-glow of them? Maybe it’s just me. Maybe it was the first prominent novel, when it came out back in the 70s, that poked fun at the raison d’être of British rule in India; maybe it was a pioneering......more

Goodreads review by Paul on December 28, 2016

I am seeing stuff about this novel which says like “I read a paragraph and fell asleep for 48 hours, this is one boring book”, or “I read a page of this, it took a fortnight, this is the opposite of fun”. But I don’t get that, they are saying that no shit is happening in this book but it’s about a s......more

Quotes

While I can't categorically state it's the best book ever, I find it hard to think of one that I prefer. One that does more as a work of fiction, or that says more about our flawed humanity . . . The Siege of Krishnapur is a superb portrayal of physical horrors and psychological fallout . . . [It] is wonderfully funny, written with devastating wit and rambunctious humanity. I can't praise it enough - and I can't push it enough Guardian

Inspired, funny but ultimately tragic look at colonialism in India. It has an unusual exuberance

For a novel to be witty is one thing, to tell a good story is another, to be serious is yet another, but to be all three is surely enough to make it a masterpiece New Statesman

A novel of quite outstanding quality The Times

Awards

  • The Booker Prize
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