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The Siege of Krishnapur

(Empire Trilogy #2)

J.G. Farrell,

Pankaj Mishra (Introduction)

3.90 · Rating details · 5,964 ratings · 534 reviews

India, 1857--the year of the Great Mutiny, when Muslim soldiers turned in bloody rebellion on their British overlords. This time of convulsion is the subject of J. G. Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur, widely considered one of the finest British novels of the last fifty years.

Farrell's story is set in an isolated Victorian outpost on the subcontinent. Rumors of strife ...more

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Paperback, 344 pages

Published April 1st 2004 by New York Review of Books (first published 1973)

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Aug 10, 2017 Michael rated it really liked it

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 Singapore Grip (which I've yet to read).

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Nov 07, 2019 Vit Babenco rated it it was amazing

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 are useless by themselves. How pathetic they are compared with noble feelings! What a poor and limited world they reveal beside the world of the eternal soul!

The ideal and material worlds are in the 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 are useless by themselves. How pathetic they are compared with noble feelings! What a poor and limited world they reveal beside the world of the eternal soul!

The ideal and material worlds are in the state of constant collision… Consequently, riots and rebellions are manifestations of this everlasting conflict…

“Oh Louise,” he exclaimed, “that is why it’s so important that we bring to India a civilization of the heart, and not only to India but to the whole world… rather than this sordid materialism. Only then will we have a chance of living together in harmony. Will there even be classes and races on that golden day in the future? No! For we shall all be brothers working not to take advantage of each other but for each other’s good!”

God placed Adam and Eve in the paradise offering them an ideal existence in an ideal world… And the Serpent seduced them to eat a forbidden fruit so they would know the temptations of a material world…
And J.G. Farrell is capable to portray even the darkest moments of the story without losing his sharp and intelligent irony…

They were glad of prayers. They felt that the more prayers they heard the better. But they became a little impatient as the Padre rambled on about Sin. What he said was true, no doubt, but they had the enemy to think of… It was rather like having someone keep asking you the time when your house is on fire. They found it hard to give him their whole attention.

However high may one’s ideals be but without material things, one just will die…

“All our actions and intentions are futile unless animated by warmth of feeling. Without love everything is a desert. Even Justice, Science, and Respectability.”

Only the equilibrium of the ideal and the material can bring harmony. ...more

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Mar 24, 2011 William2 rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, 20-ce, uk

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 warfare either. Instead, the story focuses on a relatively small group of twenty or so British subjects within the government compound of Lucknow, disguised here as Krishnapur, and how they fend off 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 warfare either. Instead, the story focuses on a relatively small group of twenty or so British subjects within the government compound of Lucknow, disguised here as Krishnapur, and how they fend off the attacking Muslim sepoys until relieved by their fellow occupying nationals.

The book is a pleasure read. I understand Farrell wanted to emphasize the claustrophobic isolation of the Residency, and how that strain told over time on the ever-thinning inhabitants. But to do that he felt he had to ignore the native POV, and that was something I missed keenly as a reader. Granted, the book is what it is. I don't want to say that Farrell should have written some other book.

The novel is anti-colonial in the best sense, not at all in a hectoring or strident fashion. Author Farrell shows us why the imperialist mindset was wrong from the start by way of so many actions and images. One being the materialist-spiritualist dichotomy which is an ongoing theme throughout the novel. The Great Exhibition of 1851 serves as the embodiment of the materialist side. We know the tide has turned against expansionist imperialism when the Collector, earlier such a great fan of the Exhibition, comes to the conclusion that

He, too, [had] suffered from an occasionally enlightening vision which came to him from the dim past and which he must have suppressed at the time . . . The extraordinary array of chains and fetters, manacles and shackles exhibited by Birmingham for export to America's slave states, for instance . . . Why had he not thought more about such exhibits? Well, he had never pretended that science and industry were good in themselves, of course . . . They still had to be used correctly. All the same he should have thought a great deal more about what lay behind the exhibits.

Of course, the view that science was and is good in itself was exactly the view that the Collector espoused before the siege opened his eyes. Recommended for all, but especially lovers of the historical novel. ...more

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Feb 01, 2015 Jibran rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, south-asian-fiction, booker, hindustan, empire, brouhaha

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 attempt by a [British] writer to show the absurdity of colonial superiority by laying bare its own inner inconsistencies through well-crafted British characters battling their own civilisational 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 attempt by a [British] writer to show the absurdity of colonial superiority by laying bare its own inner inconsistencies through well-crafted British characters battling their own civilisational demons; and maybe it was the first of its kind when a writer penned something about the Raj without stooping down to the level of a twinkle-eyed romantic suffering from nostalgic cramps for the lost "Jewel in the Crown."

To this end Farrell is quite successful. This is whence all rating stars come. Through the drama that unveils during the long summer months of siege at the Krishnapur Residency, the confined British officials and civilians come to a slow and painful realisation of the fragile state of their own civilisation they in their hauteur thought was invincible. Primary among them is the Collector who sees the futility of the great advance of science and art when, for the sake of survival, he is forced to use artifacts as cannon fodder when ammunition runs out; Drs Dunstaple and McNab, who were proud of the superiority of modern medicine, get into a bitter conflict when they fail to agree on the most appropriate treatment for the epidemic of cholera amongst the besieged; the ladies eyeing one another in disgust when they are put together into one big hall in complete disregard for their social rank; through the figure of the cynical Padre who, instead of providing a moral-religious support, sweats over inconsequential doctrinal debate going on in Germany – a superior civilisation shown rattling at its base when for once they were forced to confront the tragedy of life at point blank. Yet despite this there is stubborn refusal to admit to the real reasons of the Rebellion. It is ingratitude – worse, indifference - on the part of the native towards the fruits of ‘civilisation’

…the collector was overcome by a feeling of helplessness. He realized that there was a whole way of life of the people in India which he could never get to know and which was totally indifferent to him and his concerns. ‘The Company could pack up tomorrow and this fellow would never notice…And not only him…The British could leave and half India wouldn’t notice us leaving just as they didn’t notice us arriving. All our reforms of administration might be reforms on the moon for all it has to do with them.’

Irony is very well done but other than that, though it carries some flashes of fine writing, as all prominent novels do, it’s lacking in style. It is also lacking in interesting drama which a story set amid such an animated year of history shouldn’t have to be said about; and there are stretches of flat and uninteresting prose that, well, just didn’t do it for me.

This novel is described as a fictional account of the War of Independence / Sepoy Mutiny / Rebellion / What-You-Call-It of 1857. The reading of the novel makes it hard to justify this descriptor without qualified comment. Yes, it’s set around that episode of Indian-British history but the scope of the historical setting is so limited as to fit in a preface; what follows after that bears little resemblance to that momentous year. Which is to say it does not make you feel you’re really reading about 1857 but a long-winded random tale of heroic defence put up by a bunch of brave Brits against odds, against an army of anonymous native shadows.

My edition is 375 pages long. One would think in a novel of this size there was ample space for the inclusion of native point of view, a few characters who could be portrayed talking, walking and brooding like their British counterparts, even if to enrich the story if not to actually represent their point of view. But there is none of that save a half-baked caricature of a lowly crownless ‘prince’, named Hari and his mannequin-like ‘prime minister’. This Hari has had elementary British education, speaks ungrammatical English, and has taken to amassing bric-a-brac of art in imitation of the British masters. He is a dimwit and a lecher – two traits of the Indian character British chroniclers of that time didn’t tire of recording. Oh and there are three more natives who are mentioned more than once – all three serving the Company Bahadur faithfully during the siege, sharing its travails and just being true to their salt. They are Ram, Muhammad, and a burly Sikh named Hookum Singh (no Nanak Singh unfortunately) – and they don’t utter a word throughout the story, just follow orders. How convenient!

The Collector, the official in charge of the British administration in the fictional Krishnapur, gets a timely vision of their eventual success. Consider this symbol of the native seeking liberty:

Suddenly, a shadow swooped at him out of a thin grove of peepul trees he was passing through. He raised a hand to defend himself as something tried to claw and bite him, then swooped away again. In the twilight he saw two green pebbles gazing down at him from beneath a sailor cap. It was the pet monkey he had seen before in the shadow of the Church; the animal had managed to bite and tear itself free of its jacket but the sailor hat had defied all its efforts. Again and again, in a frenzy of irritation it had clutched at that hat on which was written "HMS John Company" . . . but it had remained in place. The string beneath its jaw was too strong.

Maybe it’s just me.
...more

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Dec 28, 2016 Paul Bryant rated it liked it

Shelves: novels

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 siege man so you can bet shit is happening, there is cholera and legs off and piles of bodies and mangy dogs that will eat other dogs and people get boils a lot, I didn’t know that was such a big thing ...more

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Aug 27, 2015 Tony rated it really liked it

Shelves: british, nyrb-classics

My views on colonialism are such that in this recounting of battle between Brits and mutinous Sepoys, I had no trouble rooting for the home team.

Farrell feels the same way. Even the most kind-hearted of his characters are flawed, if only because they just don't get it or can't make themselves understood.

Yet, this telling of the Great Mutiny is Anglo-centric. So this is not about why the Sepoys mutinied. Of course they did. No, this is about the British who were there, and about how they could ...more

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Jul 08, 2010 mark monday rated it liked it

Shelves: into-the-past, mind-the-gap, world-of-insects

fairly enjoyable overall and the period details are particularly fascinating. or maybe i just have a thing for the specific era on display. unfortunately something left me cold about this novel. perhaps it was the lack of old-fashioned adventure in what was a tale of a very bloody and very lengthy siege. perhaps it was the constantly ironic and semi-comic portraits of the characters, both english and indian. although the author uses his barbed wit in a rather unique fashion, as an approach to an ...more

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Feb 03, 2011 Paul rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: indian-novels

This is an excellent read and captures well the British in India in the nineteenth century with historical accuracy. There is great wit and humour in the book and some genuinely funny moments; however it is also a very brutal book with some grim scenarios. It captures well the British approach to empire in the characters of those caught in the siege and watching their gradual deterioration physically and mentally is fascinating. One of the characters has many antiques and artifacts from the ...more

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Apr 24, 2011 Cadiva rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

I had to study this for my A level and it was one of the few fictional books that I've had to dissect which still came out as one of my favourite books.

There are so many amazing moments in this book that it's difficult to know which to pick out but the incident on the stairs will remain with me for my lifetime I know.

The characters are believable, the setting is, obviously, historically realistic and the outcome of the novel is an acceptable conclusion which demonstrates perfectly the flaws of I had to study this for my A level and it was one of the few fictional books that I've had to dissect which still came out as one of my favourite books.

There are so many amazing moments in this book that it's difficult to know which to pick out but the incident on the stairs will remain with me for my lifetime I know.

The characters are believable, the setting is, obviously, historically realistic and the outcome of the novel is an acceptable conclusion which demonstrates perfectly the flaws of the old British Empire and how the decline began in the Indian Raj.

Events in the book are both brutal and also hilarious, the mix between these two elements makes the horrific incidents even more shocking and, in George Fleury, Farrell has created a character who isn't so much a hero as a man forced by circumstance to up his game and turn his back on the dandified British officer background he comes from when things come to a head as the Sepoys mutiny, taking the local populace with them.

The other characters are portrayed as superficial, everything exists within the vacuum created by the sieging natives and yet life goes on as normal for this section of the elite and their servants.

Farrell makes no mention of those involved in the uprising, they are kept as a faceless mass of seething anger and hatred and this helps to prolong the feeling that those stuck inside Krishnapur's British compound were also ignorant of the native population and what effect the Raj was having on their country and their existence.

Having said that, Farrell was a supremely talented author and, in spite of their flaws and their self-absorbing and self-serving nature, you do want to see them survive and get back home to Blighty.

He finishes off the novel with a sucker punch, none of those involved who survive appear to have learnt their lessons at all, they return to other parts of the Empire with the same attitudes of superiority and condescension they brought back from India.

It's a supremely well written book and a deserved winner of the 1974 Booker Prize. It's also part of his Empire trilogy of books looking at the breakdown in the British Empire alongside Troubles (set in Ireland and also a winner of the Lost Man Booker Prize of 1970) and The Singapore Grip.

That his talent was lost at such a relatively early age when he drowned while fishing off the coast of Ireland aged only 44, is a real blow. ...more

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Feb 21, 2019 Lark Benobi rated it it was ok

Recommends it for: no one?

Shelves: india-pakistan, uk, male-identified-authors, 2019

My main admiration for this novel is that it managed to be both masterfully written and really awful at the same time.

Farrell makes his British characters pay and pay and pay for the crimes of colonization, in brutally absurd scenes. Characters are spared no degradation and yet they never lose their bone-headed, obstinate British-ness, or the certainty of their superiority. Ha, ha.

This novel's peculiar balance between: 1) "wow, this is written so well" with 2) "my god, this is making me sick" ...more

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Nov 10, 2007 Andrew rated it it was amazing

I consider myself lucky that I ended up reading this book after the other two in Farrell's empire trilogy, Troubles and The Singapore Grip. Farrell captured me when I picked up Troubles on a free table at my old Job. It was a supremely clever book, and I couldn't wait to find more by the author. The Singapore Grip was compelling as well, but seemed unwieldy. I don't thing Farrell had complete control of the plot and message, and the book suffers from the lack of direction. Perhaps it was the ...more

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Oct 23, 2012 Jessica marked it as aborted-efforts

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.

I didn't stop her and reclaim the book until I was sure that she'd lost my place.

I wanted to join the worldly, intelligent ranks of Mary McCarthy and everyone else who's ever picked up The Siege of Krishnapur but now that the bookmark's been removed I'm throwing in the 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.

I didn't stop her and reclaim the book until I was sure that she'd lost my place.

I wanted to join the worldly, intelligent ranks of Mary McCarthy and everyone else who's ever picked up The Siege of Krishnapur but now that the bookmark's been removed I'm throwing in the towel. I'd reached this terrible point of stasis with the book where it was well-written and interesting enough that I couldn't in good conscious give up and move on to reading something else, but I just wasn't enjoying it and never actually wanted to pick it up so because I couldn't start anything else I really just haven't been reading.

My problem was that while the prose was great and its world was fascinating and vividly described, I just didn't give a shit if any of the characters lived or died, mostly because I felt the author looked down on them and didn't care much what happened to them either. Also, this book did nothing to make colonialism make any more sense to me. It actually made it make even less sense, as from the first pages I was practically shaking the book, dying to understand why any of these lunatics ever did this -- travel so very far from home to oppress, enslave, and dominate other people while in grave personal discomfort and, it turns out, physical danger? -- which was maybe the point but it's not like I had some cherished belief in the wisdom and value of colonialism that needed to be shaken to its core, so.

So.

This book was good and I liked a lot of things about it, but I ultimately just couldn't get into it and I'm bailing about halfway though. It should surprise no one to learn conclusively that I am a dolt and a philistine. I was trying to pretend that I was not, but my mischievous infant has unmasked me and the little charade is up. If you need me, look behind the cover of a 1940s crime novel; I'll leave The Siege of Krishnapur to more refined minds than my own. ...more

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Dec 05, 2016 BrokenTune rated it it was ok

Shelves: reviewed

Later, while he was drinking tea at the table in his bedroom with three young subalterns from Captainganj a succession of musket balls came through the winder, attracted by the oil-lamp . . . one, two, three and then a fourth, one after another. The officers dived smartly under the table, leaving the Collector to drink his tea alone. After a while they
re-emerged smiling sheepishly, deeply impressed by the Collector’s sang-froid. Realizing that he had forgotten to sweeten his tea, the Collector ...more

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Oct 20, 2010 K.D. Absolutely rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to K.D. by: Man Booker 1973

Shelves: 1001-core, booker, historical-fiction, booker-of-bookers

Definitely well-written, a joy to read and deserving of its Booker Prize in 1973. It is the story of a siege that according to Wiki was part of the Indian Rebellion in 1857 against British colonizers in India. In that siege, a small group of British people had to fend for themselves in a small community (that reminded me of a Jewish ghetto) for more than a month so when they finally got out, they were like, or even worse, than the Indians that they used to look down or ridicule as colonizers.

Definitely well-written, a joy to read and deserving of its Booker Prize in 1973. It is the story of a siege that according to Wiki was part of the Indian Rebellion in 1857 against British colonizers in India. In that siege, a small group of British people had to fend for themselves in a small community (that reminded me of a Jewish ghetto) for more than a month so when they finally got out, they were like, or even worse, than the Indians that they used to look down or ridicule as colonizers.

It's a satire attacking both the colonizers (England) and the conquered (Indian nationals). Presented a balanced view, I ended up mesmerized on how could Farrell, and English (Irish descent), could hide his bias in this well-researched work. This is definitely more balanced and stuffed with details than E. M. Forster's A Passage to India (3 stars) that book about India being a British colonized country that immediately comes into my mind whenever this period in Indian history comes into discussion. Now, I know a better book and that is The Siege of Krishnapur.

At first, I thought that I would not enjoy reading this book because it is filled with so much details that were unfamiliar to me. I even had to google the word "sepoy" haha. But as I went on, slowly but surely, it became a hard-to-put-down book and finishing it gave me a unmeasurable pleasure considering that Philippines also had to struggle fighting against our own colonizers: Spain, the US and Japan. So, I cheered on while the sepoys and the Indian soldiers conquered Krishnapur although at the back of my mind, I also care about the Collector, Magistrate, Fleury and Lucy. It's that feeling that you don't know who to side with that made the reading interesting. Not to mention of course that I also love history and reading historical fiction gives the best of both worlds: you enjoy the literary style of the author and you also learn so much about what happened during that part of a nation's history.

My first book by J. G. Farrell and definitely not the last.

...more

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Apr 01, 2008 Cathy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: india-and-bollywood-related

So, so good. Plotwise, it's kind of Camus' The Plague meets Gunga Din or something -- Brits end up holed up in the administrator's residence in a remote Indian town during the Sepoy mutiny, and you get to see everyone's personality under pressure. It seems to me that I have read a lot of books about groups of people trapped somewhere with the food running out and the pressure on, and what becomes of them -- so, it's not very original on that level, but the people themselves are fascinating, the ...more

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Oct 27, 2008 Chloe rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, 1001-list, imperialism, south-asia, nyrb

You know those books that you think you know even before you read them. Those books that seem to strike those happy chords in your heart and call out to be your bosom buddies based on nothing more than an impression of their cover? That's how Krishnapur and I were for those months it sat on my shelf before I got around to it. Yet when I recently got around to actually cracking the spine on this Booker winner, I found that I had no clue what I was in store for.

Rather than a brutal retelling of You know those books that you think you know even before you read them. Those books that seem to strike those happy chords in your heart and call out to be your bosom buddies based on nothing more than an impression of their cover? That's how Krishnapur and I were for those months it sat on my shelf before I got around to it. Yet when I recently got around to actually cracking the spine on this Booker winner, I found that I had no clue what I was in store for.

Rather than a brutal retelling of colonial history, of the harsh realities of life under the British yoke, this was more of a look at the psychology of imperialism- of the justifications that the Brits (and currently the Americans in Iraq) threw up in order to shield themselves from the guilt of their repression of the indigenous peoples. These excuses range from the glory of spreading Christianity among the dark heathens, to developing a better understanding of the pseudoscience of phrenology, to the bringing of rational science to a people who would rather sacrifice a goat than build their dikes higher and prevent flooding. That Ballard can compose such a story while avoiding having any actual native characters (aside from the faceless masses waiting to storm the building that forms the titular Siege) is a tribute to his skill as a writer. Better than anything, Ballard drives home just how banal this evil was and how unwittingly it was perpetrated upon their Indian subjects in the name of progress.

The time is the early 1860s, the setting is a fictional cantonment in a Hindustan still ruled by the East India Company. The Indian army is in revolt because the new bullets they were issued are greased in animal fat to allow for easier loading. The military can not understand why this is upsetting for their Hindi soldiers, because loading the weapons entails using ones teeth which is a violation of their vegetarian ways. So the sepoys (Indian soldiers) revolt and trap the Brits in the local government headquarters and begin a months-long siege.

Over the next several hundred pages, Farrell unravels the various foibles of these ladies and gentlemen, who have relied for so long on their servants for everything that they can't even fathom a reality where they must do their own work. Things swiftly devolve into a miasma that reminds me of nothing so much as Pride & Prejudice with Lord of the Flies (which is fitting, given the recent popularity of Austen adaptations such as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies or Pride & Predator).

Farrell's style is long-winded and occasionally a bit too pedantic to allow me to give it that ever-elusive fifth star, but the stunningly complex characters that he weaves together into an increasingly chaotic rabble all, at one point or another, manage to get you invested in their continued survival. It's odd to see that, no matter how willfully blind they are to the native's complaints or how unconsciously racist these people are, I still care about whether they survive to return to England and feast upon the Queen's crumpets or whatever it is that Brits do in their spare time (I imagine that it has something to do with dog's bollocks). ...more

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Jul 12, 2016 DeB MaRtEnS rated it it was amazing

Shelves: historical-fiction, memorably-good, classics, i-remember-reading-this, africa-mideast-asia, british-author

Having just read a very light British novel which brought to mind old movies and romantic novels of eras past, I Googled through lists of fiction where the setting is India. Well, by George, if I didn't find a different sort of novel altogether and I couldn't resist adding it to my "Read" bookshelf, even though that reading took place an era ago in itself.

"The Siege of Krishnapur" came to me via my mother-in-law, (until 1994), the daughter of Englishman who had begun his adulthood seeking his ...more

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Jul 04, 2011 Shovelmonkey1 rated it liked it

Shelves: 1001-books

This book totally fooled me - I thought it was written ages ago in times gone by, days of yore etc. but nope, JG Farrell rattled it out in the 1970s. Very tricksy in a EM Forster representation of Brits in a colonial setting kind of way.

You might want to keep a cup of tea handy or perhaps a G & T as you will want something to dunk this book in - it can be a little dry . The petty tribulations of life in colonial India are really brought to the fore with delicate lay-dees overcome by heat/ ...more

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Aug 01, 2008 Teresa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Great book. So well-written that though you know it's a satire (which comes across without authorial comment), you still end up caring about the characters and their outcome. Also amazing in that much of it is funny (despite the subject matter) with a purpose -- hard to pull off, but he does.

Also well-done are the handling of its themes, such as what is civilization and who gets to decide it, and the notion of superstition within religion. The whole story is a metaphor really; but done so ...more

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Aug 19, 2011 Megan Baxter rated it really liked it

Yet another book that I liked but didn't love. There were times when I found it hard to go back to - there was never, for me, any drive to see what happened next.

Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.

In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook

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Jul 12, 2011 J. rated it liked it

Shelves: empires-end, india, crack-in-the-sky

J.G. Farrell's novel of the Indian Mutiny as seen from the inside; the story concerns the British trapped in a siege of their compound by their own former Indian Army members or sepoys. As the entitled representatives of the decades-old British Raj, their defense is secondary to the sheer stunned disbelief that the native population should ever even consider rising up.

The author weaves a few parallel threads here, making his little instant-dystopia the direct result of the injustice of autocracy J.G. Farrell's novel of the Indian Mutiny as seen from the inside; the story concerns the British trapped in a siege of their compound by their own former Indian Army members or sepoys. As the entitled representatives of the decades-old British Raj, their defense is secondary to the sheer stunned disbelief that the native population should ever even consider rising up.

The author weaves a few parallel threads here, making his little instant-dystopia the direct result of the injustice of autocracy and colonialism. And it is the perfect model for the historical situation in miniature. But no Indian in the book is developed much beyond the level of character-actor.

Not that tommy-at-the-cannon isn't out to give the dark little people their inning, when it's felt to be the proper thing:

“… What was concerning them at the moment was the thought that, since the sepoys could not be expected to attack from their direction, they might have no chance to fire their cannon. There was an important question they had to resolve: would it be considered permissible, in the circumstances, to fire at any native who presented himself within range, as they might well not see any actual sepoys? Would it be sporting? What they concluded in the end was this: it all depended on the direction of the native’s progress … if the native was coming either directly towards them, or at an angle of anything up to forty-five degrees, it was fair to assume that his intentions were mischievous and they could blow him to smithereens (at any angle greater than forty-five degrees they would quickly review his case and then blow him to smithereens or not, as the case might be). While they were settling this the darkness was slowly fading on the verandah where they waited…”

Farrell knows that the hearts and minds battle is lost from page one, and wisely doesn't pile on the Glaring Hypocrisy thread as much as a lesser writer might. Instead, a Cook's tour of all kinds of Victorian preoccupations is on offer, spiritualism to phrenology, cricket, railways and the Age of Steam all have their moments. At least for those in the Residency. The ongoing theme of the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, with its forward-looking, semi-inclusive emphasis on Science (and the White Man's Burden in educating the populace), is felt by the hierarchy to be the mission in India, and circulates throughout.

The breakdown in conditions, as the Siege continues onwards, leads to re-examinations of the prevailing wisdom, the concepts of class and property, in the push for making limited resources do for the good of all:

“The food in question had, of course, belonged to the dead; but now the living who still possessed their own meager stores began to fear for their safety. Prices had already quadrupled during the siege; now a frenzy of economic activity took place in which more than one lady gave a handful of pearls for a bottle of honey or a box of dates. This was regarded by many of the erstwhile “bolting” party as the twilight of reason before the Collector’s increasingly communistic inclinations demanded that you give up not only your stores, but perhaps your spare clothes, and, who knows? Maybe even your wife as well. Others, conscious that they were eating the equivalent of a diamond brooch or a sapphire pendant, sat down to a last giddy meal, eating before the Collector could get his hands on it, all at once, what they had hoarded for weeks. Exasperated by this foolishness, the Collector told Mr Simmons to distribute the extra food, with the rations, as quickly as possible.
“The rations?”
“The normal daily rations of the food in the Commissariat.” The Collector looked at Mr Simmons as if he were being obtuse. . .”

The white characters are well developed, and the reader is swept up in the strangeness of an unending emergency, alternating from devastating attacks to watchful doldrums in the long afternoons and nights. We are given a lot of specifics on the artillery, and a lot of shot-loading, tamping and fusing goes on in the livelier moments. As with every single Brit novel ever set in the subcontinent, we naturally have the Monsoon. We are also treated, necessarily, to a fair amount of the gore and reek of bloody 19th century warfare.

As they always do, the British bear up and suffer along willingly. Contrarily, custom and ritual are grasped at, gleefully, as the situation goes south. Afternoon tea is served even when there's no actual tea; piping hot water in the customary teapots, cups and saucers preserves the practice. Neither the stoic countenance of the Anglican church nor the habitual stagecraft of the Raj will be denied, even to the end.

Farrell does well and it's a streamlined, gripping read; the absence of any true Indian character is explained -- or better, perhaps mirrored-- by the fact that the white hierarchy also has absolutely no idea of the Indians under their oppressive control. Good as it is, this finally feels a bit like a cut and paste construction; given the historical facts, it would almost be difficult to make this uninteresting if it's assembled in the right order. Worth the trip simply for the day-in day-out of the Raj, though, the 'enlightened rule' that was not to be.
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Sep 11, 2009 Grace Tjan rated it really liked it

Shelves: long-ago-and-never-was, british-literature, 2009

In The Siege of Krishnapur, J.G. Farrell exposes colonialism as what it really was: a Victorian folly riddled with hypocrisy and exploitation, a fact that gradually became apparent during the Great Mutiny of 1857. The various characters holed up inside the Company’s Residency in Krishnapur each represent the different faces of the British colonialism: the Collector, a conscientious bureaucrat whose mission is to bring Western science and civilization (as exemplified by the Great Exhibition of In The Siege of Krishnapur, J.G. Farrell exposes colonialism as what it really was: a Victorian folly riddled with hypocrisy and exploitation, a fact that gradually became apparent during the Great Mutiny of 1857. The various characters holed up inside the Company’s Residency in Krishnapur each represent the different faces of the British colonialism: the Collector, a conscientious bureaucrat whose mission is to bring Western science and civilization (as exemplified by the Great Exhibition of 1851) to India; the Padre, who wants to deliver the people of India from heathenish superstitions; Harry Dunstaple, a young soldier whose sole interest is his military career in the Company’s army; the Magistrate, a cynical official obsessed with the ‘science’ of phrenology; and Fleury, an aspiring Romantic poet who has recently arrived in India with his widowed sister, Miriam. The whole lot of them, including Harry’s sister Louise and a band of loyal Company servants, spend increasingly desperate months being besieged by mutinous sepoys.

Farrell has a fine eye for the ridiculous as well as the macabre; while pariah dogs and vultures feast on human and animal carcasses outside the ramparts of the Residency, Fleury and Dunstaple have to figure out how to scrape off swarming insects from a young lady’s naked body without outraging Victorian modesty. A Cholera epidemic rages while the two resident doctors argue about its cause. And during a desperate bout of fighting, the Magistrate, feeding his obsession, surreptitiously feels up other people’s heads.

The only native character that Farrell describes in some depth is Hari, the English-educated son of the Maharaja of Krishnapur, a passionate advocate of ‘progress’ that comes from the West. However, his sole encounter with Fleury ends up in mutual misunderstanding, and while visiting the Residency to offer his support, he is taken hostage by the British. The sepoys and the rest of the native population are as alien and hostile as the vast Indian plains that threaten to engulf the tiny British enclave. Ultimately, despite all of their efforts to impose their values on the Indians, the colonials are simply irrelevant to a country that they barely understand. A lesson that could very well apply to modern day Western powers that occupy foreign countries in the name of progress.

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Oct 23, 2012 Justin Evans rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction

Towards the end of SoK, the once-sanguine Collector meets the once-romantic Fleury. Fleury asks him about his collection of art; the Collector says that "Culture is a sham. It's a cosmetic painted on life by rich people to conceal its ugliness."

I enjoyed Farrell's 'Troubles,' but something about it was a bit off. In part, it just wasn't as streamlined or controlled as SoK is. I was worried that SoK would end up as unsatisfying as T through the first 100 or so pages. But by the time the ...more

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May 26, 2011 David rated it it was amazing

Shelves: desert-island, read-2011, life-syllabus

Farrell was a genius. _Troubles_ had me thinking it, this book confirms it. Watching him juggle the horrifying and the hilarious for over 300 pages is amazing. This is a much more suspenseful, harrowing read than that equally great study of disintegration and the End of Empire. But taken together they're a wonder. (I took some time off after Troubles, knowing I wanted to be able to savor rather than gulp Farrell's other great works. I will, again, now take some time before finishing the ...more

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Mar 03, 2017 Jane rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed, library, india, raj

Witty and well-written novel conflating the Sieges of Lucknow and Cawnpore during the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, into the fictional Siege of Krishnapur. The story concerns a group of English in that area in Northern India who hold out for four months against mutinous sepoys. Trapped inside the official Residence and surrounding compound, which has been ringed by a dirt barrier and a ditch, we see the interactions among the various stiff upper lipped characters and their bravery, battling not only the ...more

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Mar 18, 2012 Tom rated it really liked it

Shelves: british-lit, historical-novels, irish-lit

For all its dramatic action, tone is the real driving force in this novel. A mixture of satire and admiration for characters whose persona resides somewhere between famous Punch cartoon character Colonel Blimp and Churchill. Though Farrell clearly challenges the myth of British military heroism and global contributions of Brit culture ("Culture is a sham. It's a cosmetic painted on life by rich people to conceal its ugliness," says one character, the alleged 'hero of Krishnapur,' who dismisses For all its dramatic action, tone is the real driving force in this novel. A mixture of satire and admiration for characters whose persona resides somewhere between famous Punch cartoon character Colonel Blimp and Churchill. Though Farrell clearly challenges the myth of British military heroism and global contributions of Brit culture ("Culture is a sham. It's a cosmetic painted on life by rich people to conceal its ugliness," says one character, the alleged 'hero of Krishnapur,' who dismisses this encomium as patriotic pablum.), poking fun at lengths to which its true believers will preserve quaint rituals of high society under the worst conditions, Farrell also appears to admire their perseverance in the face of massacre. One might sum up his view thusly: "Hate the Empire, love its courageous dupes." But it's to F's credit that he makes you care about these dupes enough to hope for their survival and sympathize with their illusions for the best way to insure that survival. In other words, the most shallow and most doctrinaire of Queen-lovers come across as wholly human, not mere punching bags for F's satire. And he keeps the preaching to a minimum, withholding any final judgements until the end (SPOILER ALERT HERE) when the reluctant 'Hero of K' muses that "a people, a nation, does not create itself according to its own best ideas, but is shaped by other forces, of which it has little knowledge."

Vol 2 in F's Empire Trilogy, SoK is a notch below Vol 1, The Troubles, lacking its macabre and weird atmosphere and its more nuanced portrayal of characters, but it's highly entertaining, even riveting at times, and left me looking forward to reading Vol 3, Singapore Grip in the not too distant future.

Here's one of my favorite passages in the novel, one that gives a flavor of F's tone (the 'Collector' is the 'Hero of K,' Vokins his manservant, who is providing updates on Indian attack while British officers and dignitaries dine):

“The trouble was that Vokins, as he made his solemn journeys from the door to the Collector’s ear, did not understand that many of these messages were redundant (for, after all, once a cantonment has been set alight the number of bungalows blazing, more or less, is a matter of relative indifference). Vokins thought they were cumulative and progressive; Vokins lacked the broader view. He tended only to see the prospect of the Death of Vokins. Although some of the Collector’s guests might have been hard put to it to think what a man of Vokin’s class had to lose, to Vokins it was very clear what he had to lose: namely his life. He was not at all anxious to leave his skin on the Indian plains; he wanted to take it back to the slums of Soho or wherever it came from.” (139) ...more

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Jun 26, 2018 Girish rated it liked it

Shelves: booker

The Siege of Krishnapore is set around the Sepoy mutiny of 1857 in a fictional town of Krishnapur. The British are confounded how the natives can reject civilisation and loftier thinking (and religion) which tells them all is not well in their colonial exploits. The book is a satirical take that focus on the colonialist/civilisation ideas prevalent at the time through an assortment of characters who are thrown in together as the natives hold them under siege.

The book plays out like a movie The Siege of Krishnapore is set around the Sepoy mutiny of 1857 in a fictional town of Krishnapur. The British are confounded how the natives can reject civilisation and loftier thinking (and religion) which tells them all is not well in their colonial exploits. The book is a satirical take that focus on the colonialist/civilisation ideas prevalent at the time through an assortment of characters who are thrown in together as the natives hold them under siege.

The book plays out like a movie script. We have an eccentric Collector who sees signs of the mutiny and tries to warn the Company of the discontent. When his attempts fail, he starts fortifying the Collectorate in preparation for the eventual mutiny. When the locals launch an organized rebellion, the other natives who dismissed him as crazy are forced to move into the collectorate for their safety.

Under the roof we have multitude of characters. There is Padre, who in almost dark humor, goes around preaching the wonder of God in the face of death and destruction. We have two egocentric doctors with conflicting views and styles who use the misery to establish oneupmanship over the other. We have Harry, a young veteran, who steps up and Fleury, an artist at heart, who tries to step up. Then there are the women who harbor their own complex grudges and vacillations. And an atheist major who believes in the science of Phrenology.

The gory nature of the siege - of disease, hunger and misery is explained with vivid images. The crumbling of ideals, ideas and opinions over the period of siege is illustrated through subtle ironies and symbolism. Like when the entire cast (or survivors) come under one roof of the Banquet hall reduced to their basic elements or when the Padre authorises shooting cannons of crosses believing it will do greater damage.

The Indians actually make only guest appearances, Not even as strong side characters except the Sikh soldiers and the helps. It does capture the history right of the Sepoy Mutiny starting in Vellore and then in Meerut. The writing style is similar to that of EM Forester though this was written in as late as 1970s.

Personally, I found myself yawning at places. It is the typical booker that puts people off, but then rewarding to those who read it. ...more

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May 14, 2011 Elizabeth (Alaska) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 5-star-reads, awards-man-booker, 1001-books, late-20th-century

The Siege of Krishnapur was a real event, though Farrell's superbly-drawn characters are fictional. Each of his named characters has a different and unique responsibility in this British outpost in 1857 colonial India.

I consider that I have a decent comprehension and vocabulary - better than some, not as as good as others. I more or less knew the definition of siege. But it's the sort of word that, frankly, I had not spent a lot of time mulling over and picturing it's meaning in a real world ...more

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Nov 12, 2007 Quinn Slobodian rated it really liked it

It's Madame Bovary meets The Dawn of the Dead. The backdrop is a British outpost during the 1857 Indian Rebellion, or "Great Mutiny", of Indian soldiers against their British leaders which left tens of thousands dead in fighting and retribution and led to the formal annexation of India into the British Empire. The besieged outpost acts as the shopping mall in the zombie movie. With a set number of characters forced to interact with one another under steadily deteriorating living conditions, we ...more

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Oct 09, 2015 Cphe rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical, new-york-review-books-classics, 2015, trilogy

The second book in the "Empire Trilogy" and a very good read in it's own right. I'm really glad that I found this author and trilogy of novels. Not quite as fascinating or captivating as the very excellent "Troubles" but still an excellent story about a time in history that I knew very little about.
I really enjoy the overall style and delivery of this author, well worth the time and another gem from the New York Review of Books Classics list.

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About J.G. Farrell

J.G. Farrell

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James Gordon Farrell, known as J.G. Farrell, was a Liverpool-born novelist of Irish descent. Farrell gained prominence for his historical fiction, most notably his Empire Trilogy (Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur and The Singapore Grip), dealing with the political and human consequences of British colonial rule. The Siege of Krishnapur won the 1973 Booker Prize. On 19 May 2010 it was announced ...more