Tony Messenger - 1973 Winner - The Siege of Krishnapur - J.G. Farrell

A short review here and I must admit I’m slightly embarrassed that it took me 39 years to discover this novel (well I couldn’t have read it when I was 10 years old but you get what I mean).  Straight into the top 10 list of my favourite Booker Winners, and would sit very high on that list.

My edition has a quote from a New Statesman review on the back cover “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.” I couldn’t put it better myself.

The very readable, story basically tells the tale of a British community in Krishnapur (India) in the mid 1850’s. Part one developing the core characters of our tale, The Collector, the Magistrate, Harry, Fleury, Louise and Miriam; and parts two and three covering the siege itself and part four the consequential events.

There are magnificent passages and quotes that illuminate your thoughts;

Note: The following quote could be construed as a SPOILER

 “Culture is a sham…It’s a cosmetic painted on life by rich people to conceal its ugliness”

Passages that explore the human condition;

A lamp was burning in his study and in the glass of the bookcases he saw his own image, shadowy in detail, wearing an already rather tattered morning coat, the face also in shadow, anonymous, the face of a man like other men, who in a few years would be lost to history, whose personality would be no more individual than the shadowy reflection in the glass. ‘How alike we all re, really…There’s so little difference between one man and another when one comes to think of it.’

There are a plethora of reviews out there about this book and there’s not a lot more I can add about this novel, where a review in my own words feels almost heresy against the wonderful writing, composure and message of this book. One I’d highly recommend to anybody who is yet to discover J.G. Farrell.

I’m having a few weeks or months away from the Booker as I work my way through a few other award shortlists. I’ll be back with another shortlisted novel from 1973 as soon as possible.

Cross posted at my blog.

J.G.'s Review - The Siege of Krishnapur

This is one of the good ones. All prizewinners have some kind of seal of approval, which is why they can be read with confidence, but they aren't all home runs. This one, however, is everything a novel should be.

The colonial British occupy their station at Krishnapur with the supreme confidence that comes from their firm (though misguided) belief in their social, moral and technological superiority. But all that changes in short order when they come under siege from Indian soldiers who have revolted against British rule. As the siege grinds on, what starts as a temporary adventure devolves into serious hardship that threatens the entire colony with death from starvation, disease, or attack. Throughout it all, the British carry on. Their confidence in Victorian civilization gives them a tremendous strength of character.

Against this background, themes dealing with art, education, scientific progress, and morality play out through the interests and intrigues of the various characters. One of the best things about this novel is that it would be easy to ignore all the themes and symbols, and simply enjoy the gripping, adventurous plot. But there are plenty of deeper meanings to be teased out, if the reader is so inclined.

Farrell inserts a fair amount of humor--difficult as that is to believe, given the subject matter--and plenty of compassion for his characters, while refusing to sugar-coat their inability to self-evaluate and overcome their own shortcomings. Knowing the flaws in their beliefs doesn't keep the reader from caring about the characters, wanting to see them rescued, and hoping they will learn from their experience.

For more (highly enthusiastic) information, see my review at Hotchpot Cafe.

Lorraine's Review - The Siege of Krishnapur - 1973

This is the second volume in Farrell’s series of companion works about the decline of the British Empire. The first is Troubles (1970) which is about the Easter Rebellion of 1916 and recently was awarded the Lost Man Booker Prize. The third is The Singapore Grip (1979) about the invasion of Singapore by the Japanese before World War II.


The novel details the siege of a fictional Indian town during the Indian Rebellion of 1857. The perspective is that of the British residents and it was inspired by events like the siege of Lucknow. The rebellion began as a mutiny of the Sepoys of the British East India Company’s army in Meerut and soon erupted into other mutinies and rebellions. The term Sepoy was used for an infantry private in the company and they had been crucial in securing the subcontinent for the British East India Company.

In this historical fiction work the impending rebellion is foreshadowed by the surreptitious appearance of chapatis in bizarre locations around Krishnapur. The ominous chapati incidents undermine the usually placid and ordered world of the Collector, the man in charge:

“The first sign of trouble at Krishnapur came with a mysterious distribution of chapatis, made of coarse flour and about the size and thickness of a biscuit; towards the end of February, 1857, the swept the countryside like an epidemic.

One evening , in the room he used as a study the Collector, Mr. Hopkins, opened a despatch box and, instead of the documents he had expected, found four chapatis.”

We can feel that the impending siege is soon going to invade every aspect of the lives of the British residents and they will be assaulted on every front. All is not what it seems and their most prized assumptions make for fatal errors as when they are under assault:

“Sometimes, when you peer too intensely into the gloom, your eyes make you see things which do not exist; Harry and Fleury, presently began to have just this experience. If they had not known that it was impossible they could have sworn that the distant melon beds were seething with moving shadows. Yet there was no question of an attack from that quarter across so much open ground.”

Farrell takes the omniscient outsider’s point of view looking back and into the world of the British East India Company. The Collector’s world view only encompasses the achievements and progress made by the British as exemplified by the Great Exhibition of 1851. Part of the great irony is that George Fleury has been sent from Britain to write about how the British have advanced civilization and helped the natives achieve better things. But this project is of course soon stymied.

Farrell takes a long time to set the stage elucidating the characters and their attitudes and pastimes. We really get to know the characters and their maladroit handling of the impending assault as shown in this episode:

“But it is probable that the majority of people in the cantonment could not make up their minds as to the best course of follow. While the “confident” party recommended calm and indifference, and the “nervous” party were all for bolting to the Residency, the majority voted now for one course, now for the other, and sometimes even for both at once…a calm and confident bolting to the Residency.”

The black humour in the novel is always amusing and made me laugh out loud as Farrell constantly eviscerates the British and their beliefs. As well as their assumptions about the natives and that their poverty is beyond redemption they maintain their British class snobbism as demonstrated in their views of the servants:

“Although some of the collector’s guests might have been hard put to it to think of what a man of Vokins’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.”

The novel is relentless in its dark comedic aspects and it is sometimes an uncomfortable melancholic read. It firmly etches the chaos of warfare, starvation, disease and shattering madness. The fierce public debate by the two doctors about the causes and proper treatment of cholera which is sweeping the compound is profoundly ironic and sad. I felt that Farrell chose wisely in writing about what he knew about and could research - the British and decline of Empire. The Indians are the unnamed which adds to the drama and realism of the novel as in every colony they were the unknown and unrecorded.

Farrell really made me think about how our attitudes can shape our beliefs and inevitable destinies. The British perspectives were not tested until the disaster of the siege illuminates their idiocy. It made me think about how so many of our currently held beliefs are never challenged in the real world and I wondered which ones will be skewered a hundred years from now. On a small scale one of my own privately held beliefs has always been what I thought I liked to read. The Complete Booker has helped me seek out new authors and titles and try books I always overlooked before – like this one.



















.

Matthew's Review - The Siege of Krishnapur - 1973

My library has a queue for J. G. Farrell's Troubles, which won the Lost Booker Prize this month, so I decided to give his novel The Siege of Krishnapur a try.

Set during the sepoy rebellion in 1857 in British-occupied India, this is the story of a bunch of upper class English idiots as they attempt to defend their cantonment against a never-ending assault by the sepoys. The siege lasts over three months, and slowly and methodically Farrell describes the English descent into starvation, class-obliteration, madness for some, disease and death for many.

This is a brutally anti-Empire novel. I have never read another book that absolutely excoriates the idea of the British Empire. Farrell's anger and bitterness about the perceived superiority of the British is so clear and forthright, but never cloying or annoying. In fact, this is a tremendously funny novel.

It can be read in a number of ways: as an adventure novel, a kind of boy's adventure in which the gallant and dashing English triumph in the end, or, more likely, it can be read as a anti-colonialism text, heavy with symbolism and meaning.

Both ways of reading the text are hugely entertaining. I had such a great time reading this book. I kept regaling my girlfriend with bits from the text, including the amazing sequence with the two dueling physicians over the proper treatment of cholera, or the fight scene at the end of the novel in which a aristocratic fop, using a violin, battles a giant Indian with a giant sabre.

Even with all of the symbolism and dissection of the psyche, Farrell never lets the novel get boring. Rather, this is a very exciting and rip-roaring adventure. It's like a Pynchon-esque pastiche of pulp stories.

The Siege of Krishnapur is a tremendous novel: witty, comic, engaging, exciting, and hugely entertaining. I absolutely adored this novel. I was sad to finish the book, but at the same time I was desperate to find out the fate of the cast. I am very excited to read Farrell's other novels in his so-called Empire Trilogy. I expect to find the same wit and bitterness and be entertained by it.

Laura's Review - The Siege of Krishnapur

The Siege of Krishnapur
J.G. Farrell
314 pages

Looking at the Prime Minister 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 would never get to know and which was totally indifferent to him and his concerns. 'The Company could pack up here 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.' The Collector was humbled and depressed by this thought. (p.210)

This is a fictional account of one town held siege during the Indian Rebellion of 1857, when sepoys from the British East India Company's army staged a mutiny which then spread across a significant portion of the country. As the novel opens, the Collector (head of the British settlement in Krishnapur) is concerned about potential unrest. But author J.G. Farrell takes his time painting a picture of the British colonial lifestyle first, and spares no one. He captures western arrogance and superiority quite well. The Great Exhibition of 1851 is cited by many characters as an example of superior British science and intellect. Farrell also pokes fun at the Victorian fondness for possessions, describing the Residency's decor in vivid detail, and the impractical fashions worn by both men and women.

Eventually the inevitable happens and the British settlement finds itself under siege. At first the community tries to maintain some sense of normalcy, holding fast to their class structure and enjoying the odd brandy now and then. But as casualties mount and supplies dwindle, conflict inevitably arises. The Protestant and Roman Catholic clergy debate openly with each other and with certain members of their "flock." The two physicians engage in verbal sparring over the causes and cures of cholera, and members of the community take sides. Through it all the Collector attempts to remain in command, with varying degrees of success. The reader can only watch the situation deteriorate, and try to absorb the tragedy.

I struggled a bit with this book. In the opening portion I was enjoying what I considered a satirical view of British colonials. And then suddenly the satire stopped, and war took over. Yet the characters continued to behave according to the satire. My emotions were very much in conflict, until a friend hit on just the right word: sympathy. Yes, that's it. Farrell presents a very sympathetic portrait of the colonials and a situation gone very, very wrong. It was written at a time when people were beginning to re-examine the importance of empire. I suspect its message hit home, which is why it won the Booker Prize in 1973. So many years later, the impact is not quite the same but it is still an interesting story and a pretty good read. ( )

My original review can be found here.

1973 - The Siege of Krishnapur by J. G. Farrell

This is a very fine book indeed. It is - as the blurb says - both witty and serious, and it's a sort of 'boys' own adventure' too.

Set in 1857 in a remote British outpost of the empire in Hindustan, The Siege of Krishnapur is the story of the defence of the residency when the sepoys rise in revolt. Written from the vantage point of the besieged British, yet sympathetic to the justice of rebellion against their rule, it shows the British at both their best and worst.

Mr Hopkins, the Collector, is at first a comic figure, but he grows in stature. He reminds me of Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, who unexpectedly finds himself at the behest of great forces and must become equal to the task before him despite his inadequacies At the outset, however, Hopkins is convinced of the rightness of the Empire, and his place in it. He is pompous, bossy and preoccupied with C19th progress as exemplified by the Great Exhibition. He loves his possessions as talismans of a civilised life, and there is poignancy in the moment when he must cast these precious possessions into shoring up ramparts about to collapse under the monsoonal rains. He mourns his Louis XVI table when it is ruined too - but in the end, he cares not about possessions at all.

From the light-hearted beginning, with Farrell poking fun at British colonial pomposity and arrogance, events trace the gradual contraction of the 'civilised' world over four months, June to December. By the time of the relief, those within the walls are starving, dressed in rags, and they smell. The women have grey, pasty complexions, and boils. These 'fragile' creatures, formerly limp in the heat without servants to operate the fans, end up washing their own clothes, labouring in the 'hospital' and nursing the sick. But there's no romanticising this as heroism. The Collector notes that the women still ostracise the 'fallen woman', Lucy, and 'British standards' remain discriminatory for the Indians who remain loyal.

Farrell uses irony and metaphor to show that the degradation imposed on those within the ramparts by the siege, is little different to the conditions imposed on the locals by colonialism. The conflicts and prejudices of the community under stress are there to show the reader that British high-mindedness is as vulnerable as any other culture's. Human dignity is in short supply when one is subject to a long inglorious attack, which is what colonialism inflicted on its subject peoples.

Farrell also wrote The Singapore Grip and The Troubles, which similarly deal with the collapse of British colonial power. He died in 1979.

I finished reading this book and journalled it on 22.2.2003.

Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers

Trevor's Review of Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur

So far, this is my favorite of this year's Best of the Booker shortlist (I still have to read Midnight's Children and The Conservationist). It was a great story with a lot of subtle characters and themes. And the writing was excellent. I wish that Sacred Hunger could have been written in language this good and meticulous--it is poetic yet simple and does an excellent job setting the overall feel for a deep historical novel.

The novel itself, as the title says, is about a siege that happened in 1857. A British community in Krishnapur is attacked by Muslim soldiers. On that level, it is a great adventure novel. The action is great; Farrell manages to express the excitement and fear at the same time as he relays the strategies of the defense. It was both interesting and entertaining.

The true beauty of this novel, however, lies in its discussions about civilization, colonialism, and "ideas" of progress. All of the characters, at one point or another, have to examine how they feel about their position in both India and in the greater construct of "civilization." There is a lot of pride, of course. Farrell does an excellent job displaying that pride with ironic undertones. For example, when one soldier dies:

"Providence has denied his country the privilege of decking his youthful brow with the chaplets which belong to the sons of victory and of fame, but his deeds can never die. The pages of history will record and rehearse them far and wide, and every Englishman, whether in his island home or a wanderer on some foreign shore, will relate with admiration what George Foxlett Cutter did at the siege of Krishnapur!"

Since the book takes place soon after the Great Exhibition, that event provides a nice backdrop to the conversation. However, much of the book felt disconnected from its history, and I felt a strong desire to get more of an epic feel. Then again, the book is about an isolated siege that has turned out to be rather insignificant even in its own time. This feeling of isolation fits nicely with that.
5 stars out of 5.

"Best of the Booker" Shortlist Announced

As first posted here in February, the Man Booker Prize for fiction will present a special award to celebrate the prize's 40th anniversary this year. The "Best of the Booker" will honor the best overall novel to have won the prize since its inception in 1969. A similar award was created to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the prize; Salman Rushdie won the "Booker of Bookers" for his 1981 winner, Midnight's Children.

The judges have just selected the shortlist:

• 1973 - The Siege of Krishnapur (Farrell)
• 1974 - The Conservationist (Gordimer)
• 1981 - Midnight's Children (Rushdie)
• 1988 - Oscar and Lucinda (Carey)
• 1995 - The Ghost Road (Barker)
• 1999 - Disgrace (Coetzee)

A full report from The Guardian can be found here. In the opinion of their critics, Rushdie is believed to be a favorite to win this award as well. However, the decision is in the hands of the public who have an opportunity to vote on their favorite from this list. The press release on the Booker Prize website includes voting instructions.

Let the voting begin! Which one of these is your favorite?