Review Summaries

• Readers value the novel's historical momentum and its ironic attack on imperial self-deception. Some also find the cool distance and dry character work deliberately demanding.

• Readers tend to praise the vivid collapse of colonial self-importance under siege, along with the novel's tension and black humour. The dialogue and the moments when civilised certainty starts to crack are often singled out.

Reviews

• Le récit tellement drôle et acerbe d'une des tragédies de la colonisation britannique s. Toute la mauvaise foi des soi-disant "gens supérieurs" mise à nu.

• Recently on a narrative journey to Co. Bantry in Ireland with the late author Brian Moore, where he writes about a young American poet in search of his ancestry, his novel led me further to another Irish writer James Farrell (1935-1979), who had taken up a farmhouse in the elbow of Bantry Bay a few years before. At first I wedged a bit at the title of J.G. Farrell's award-winning Booker novel, "The Siege of Krishnapur" (1973), not being one for historical military accounts, and I cautiously read the first few pages only to be highly entertained, while keeping some misgivings under gun-powder lock when it came to the deployment of this historical event. This mutiny was to take place between The British East India Company and the sepoys, their recruited Indian soldiers, who turned against them in a great uprising in 1857. Raging on for about 120 days, it was violently crushed and then The Raj came in to rule the following year under the proclamation of Queen Victoria, now deemed 'The Mother of India'. On being introduced by this author to some familiar Victorian characters depicted in Part One (for the novel is divided into four), it engendered quite a bit of laughter here while knowing this was most likely all going to end in some ghastly fashion where our World is not always a wedding party. Farrell, from the first and onwards, was to catch this reader's attention in describing the mores and behavior of the British ruling class at the time in Calcutta, settled comfortably in elegant residences with their furniture from home, their familiar wardrobe and picnic baskets from Wilson's "Hall of All Nations", along with hunting weapons, cricket bats, splendid displays of polished tea sets and crystal ware. The violent conflict begins to unravel with a mysterious trail of chapatis, hard biscuits of coarse flour, first found in a desk box of Hopkins, the Collector at the fictional duty station of Krishnapur near the region of Crawnpore. This tragical farce, a dark witty account of colonialism, shortly becomes a horrific if droll nightmare, and these English people now trapped under the Siege of Krisnapur are soon huddled up at the large splendid Residency of the Collector. Every day brings more armed sepoys who amass in a growing tangled jungle of foliage on the outskirts of the compound, and these mutinous soldiers are now going for British blood and not taking any prisoners, while the bird and animal predators outdoors wait for their next gruesome meal with relish. Before this unexpected rebellion, however, and although 'spots of trouble' had been noted by British officials in Crawnpore and Lucknow among other regions, the Victorians depicted here are living in an exotic, colorful and embroidered tapestry frame, fringed with rich tassles, one which they intend eventually to bring home with some ceremony, along with a bevy of memorabilia and trophies such as sumptuous Indian fabrics, brass candle-stick holders and tiger mats to list just a few offerings and trappings on their return to England. The Collector, the central character in this narration, an aptly name as he is renowned by many for his great passion for beautiful European possessions, is a handsome tall figure with magnificent whiskers and impeccably attired to the official button. A commanding and dignified man, he is compassionate with a pacifying disposition. Only the readers are privy to his inner thoughts which he usually keeps wisely from others, and while listening to them, he drifts away at times into his own musings of the world. A married man slightly irritated with six children whom he moodily keeps at a distance, his wife has just left for England to escape the unbearable heat of the Summer Season, leaving behind her hapless daughters who tremble in awe and reverence at a sighting of their aloof father on moderate occasions. In this picture there is also the Magistrate, Hopkins' counterpart and second-in-command, a pessimistic, caustic and sardonic man who loathes his job, and takes it out on the gentle ladies of the Community, while sprouting off on the science of phrenology, and shredding with sharp sarcasm their poetic verses read to him weekly with a tremor in their voices. Then the long-awaited visiting young George Fleury finally arrives in Calcutta for the first time. A fatuous pompous youth with delicate sensibilities, Fleury is considered a catch among the mothers and daughters of the Elite, and feels troubled keeping up with romantic postures of the day, with an eye to Louise Dunstaple, the great vaporous Beauty of two cold Indian Seasons. Fleury has brought along his recently widowed sister, Miriam, whose husband was killed in battle in Crimea, and with plans to visit his mother's grave for the first time. Miriam is the most sensible of the women in this story and perhaps proves to be the wisest. The resident Doctor is the father of Louise and her brother Harry Dunstaple, a young Lieutenant in training. The latter, a keen sportsman and athlete, he shows a great interest in weaponry and the improving of it, with other artillery on hand. Over time, we see the respected Doctor develop an obsessive resentment towards his new assistant Dr. McNab, a younger doctor from Scotland, who is far more knowledgeable and advanced when it comes to saving lives and healing patients. Miss Lucy Hughes, deemed a fallen woman for a brief doomed affair, is eventually brought into the Residency by cautious invitation, and reflects the epitome of femininity. Attracting the attention of all the men, even the cold Magistrate if for other reasons, she becomes later in the Siege, a surrealistic art nightmare when she is covered from head to toe in a black robe of flying beetles, turning her into a live nude statue and into a deep faint. Revived and tidied up by the virginal and curious Fleury and Harry, Lucy holds up well as days go by, and flirting prettily away, gives a semblance of tea parties to the last, securing the heart of the young gruff and awkward military-minded Harry. The Collector is planning to fight until the end, and when ammunition runs out, Harry comes up with ingenious weapons made of silver cutlery, hair brushes, sugar-tongs, toys, stockings from the women and scrap metal, while enlisting the help of the languid Fleury. Fleury once moved to action shows himself to be an unexpected hero, and when the enemy finally enters the Residency, his close shaves and daring feats from chandelier to chandelier add some comical relief to this story of bloodshed. There are other individuals of interest in this cast of characters: an increasingly fanatic Padre, a kindly Irish priest, some rogues and villains, and somehow they all ring true to life as portrayed brilliantly by Farrell. When it comes to the Indian population, the crowds of natives and servants remain 'invisible and nameless' to British eyes, and the victims of their indifference and oppression. Thus the author only introduces us to Hari, an enthusiastic young, spoiled and bored Indian prince, who finds the British fascinating if disappointing and disconcerting on closer inspection. Before the Siege when Fleury pays him a courtesy visit at his palace on a long afternoon, their encounter is one of the funniest misinterpretations ever of inept communication between two young poorly informed men from different cultures. It never occurs to Fleury after his visit that he has narrowly escaped deliberate injury from Hari, after being unwittingly and outrageously rude to the bombastic and now enraged young prince, whose Prime Minister is perhaps the most curious Indian figure in this epic tale. The novel is full of other absurdities and ironies, while Farrell has a way about him of making us feel sorry, without plunging most of the readers into a deep gloom, of inspiring pity and admiration on hearing of the trials, the horrors and losses that these now skeletal British people are enduring. And, in the midst of the intolerable suffocating heat, floods and rotten food, suffering, cholera and death, the survivors continue to divide carefully their last few sugar lumps to place in their tea cups of boiled water during this daily ritual, too weary to shed more tears, too weary to even give much thought to their loved, or lost ones. Farrell's writing style is beautiful and a pleasure to read. His admirers may have favorite sentences of his that they find evocative and memorable. As for India, so vast and mysterious, the author on a visit was to find it overwhelming in scope and beyond his mental horizons, letting his Collector reflect in hindsight over the years that what he really only brought back with him was the vision of two village men and two bullocks drawing water from a well for every day of their lives. The Collector was much changed when he returned home and came to believe that 'a people, a nation does not create itself according to its best ideas, but is shaped by other forces of which it has little knowledge'. A famous author recently was to say of J.G. Farrell that had he not died so young, he might have been considered one of our finest British writers in contemporary literature today. But just as the author Brian Moore was to publish a work that takes place along the coast of Bantry Co. in 1979, James Gordon Farrell in the Summer of that same year was washed out to sea while fishing in Bantry Bay. It is always a gift to be led to a winning author previously unknown to a reader, and while securing now his other writings, I will leave this historical mutiny in India with thoughts of the small 'Cities of the Silent', and the many other casualties of colonialism.

• Eine handvoll Menschen werden mit all ihren Marotten, Leidenschaften und Schwächen in einer lebensgefährlichen Krisensituation an ihre Grenzen gebracht. Farrell beschreibt meisterlich, wie man sich selbst im Weg stehen kann, obwohl man doch guten Willens ist, und dass eine von Vorurteilen geprägte Haltung der schnellste Weg ins Grab sein kann. Dabei entwickelt der Autor eine unglaubliche Komik, die den Leser zwar über die Possen der Protagonisten lachen lässt, den tragischen Figuren aber nicht ihre Würde raubt. Vor allem aber reißt die Geschichte allen Anhängern von Standesdünkeln und Fortschrittsvisionen die Maske vom Gesicht. Das perfekte Buch für ein paar unterhaltsame Tage!

• This is an excellent novel and a Booker prize winner I think. It puts the reader into the British psyche during the Sepoy rebellion in 1857.

• This book won the Booker prize in 1973 and was voted second-best of the Bookers (after 'Midnight's Children') in 2008. It is extremely well written and most enjoyable. It tells of the four-month siege of Krishnapur (a fictitious town) in the Indian Mutiny (or Rebellion if you prefer) in 1857. The Collector, the effective 'governor' of the town, sees trouble coming (no-one else does) and organises the defence of the town and its Anglo-Indian community. The book is not quite a satire on the British rule in India, but it is largely driven by humour, irony, an entertaining sense of the absurd and a detached examination of how the British ex-patriates think and act in extreme circumstances. There are conventional young women - a young widow (Miriam), a beautiful and initially empty-headed girl (Louise), a 'fallen woman', Lucy - and a literal, anti-evolutionist Padre (the Mutiny came two years before 'The Origin of Species' was published), a free-thinking (and unpopular) Magistrate, a young man who believes in beauty, progress and the excellence of science (Fleury), two doctors who are at each other's throats because of differences of view on diagnosis and treatment, and so on. Through these characters Farrell explores many of the interests and pre-occupations of the time. The book is extremely well researched and very interesting in that respect - for example, on contemporary views of the causes of cholera, a subject which Drs. Dunstaple and MacNab debate publicly towards the end. That particular debate also illustrates neatly how an audience can be won over not by sense, evidence and argument, but by other, less rational, influences - it has strong resonance now in the politics of soundbites and spin. The Collector himself is a rather engaging character, dutiful, thoughtful, usually right, but with a strong sense of what benefit the British are bringing to India (why can the Indians not see that they are being offered a superior culture? why do they not welcome it with open arms?). But neither he nor anyone in the book is fully or deeply characterised. Instead, they represent values and attitudes which, no doubt, were present in mid-19th century Victorian Britain and particularly that part of it which went out and conquered the world. In the end, what makes the book such a delight to read are two things. It is very well-written, the work of an intelligent man who really can use words. It is also very funny. This is really almost impossible to exemplify. The Padre tries desperately to bury corpses in such a way that their feet don't stick out of the ground ; Fleury, facing a huge sepoy and on the point of death, defends himself with ... a violin ; the British guns are eventually loaded with old cutlery and false teeth ; the Collector is uncomfortably aware as he makes his rounds of the besieged town that two of his children are watching him constantly through a telescope ; the Maharajah's son, taking Fleury on a tour of his palace, explains to his guest as they watch the sleeping but somewhat explosive Maharajah, 'Father is breaking wind' ; why, wonders the Padre, did God write the Bible in Hebrew and Greek when English would have been a much better language ; desperate for ammunition and on their last legs, the garrison discovers that a bust of Shakespeare has excellent ballistic properties when fired from a cannon whereas a bust of Keats does not. But really, you just have to read it, and that is well worth doing.

Purchase links