Publisher details

Author: J.G. Farrell
Publisher: Hachette
Genres: Fiction, Man Booker Prize winner
Released: 01 January, 1973

The Siege of Krishnapur

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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.

About the author

J.G. Farrell

J G Farrell was born in Liverpool in January 1935. In 1956 he went to study at Brasenose College, Oxford; it was while there he contracted polio. He drew heavily on his experience for his second novel, The Lung (1965). His novel, Troubles (1970), the first in the Empire trilogy, won the Faber Memorial Prize in 1971. A film version of Troubles was made for British television in 1988. The second in the Empire trilogy, The Siege of Krishnapur (1973) won the Booker Prize. The third volume and his last completed novel, The Singapore Grip (1979), was published shortly before his death. J G Farrell died in 1979 aged 44.