Troubles is the first in JG Farrell’s (above) trilogy on the British empire, which also includes The Siege of Krishnapur and The Singapore Grip. Photograph: Jane Bown

Found: JG Farrell a worthy winner for the Lost Booker

Troubles, the first book in Liverpool-born author's Empire trilogy, triumphs in readers' vote

Alison Flood
Wed 19 May 2010

Winning the Booker prize almost 40 years ago for The Siege of Krishnapur, JG Farrell used his acceptance speech to denounce capitalism, specifically in the form of the prize's sugar-trade sponsors. The late author would no doubt have been delighted to be given a similar platform today after his novel Troubles was chosen by the reading public as winner of the Lost Booker award.

Irish Writers who have won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction

John Banville
Illustration by Triunfo Arciniegas

Irish Writers who have won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction

09/12/2019

The Booker Prize for Fiction is awarded each year for the best original novel written in English. Until recently, the prize was limited to only writers publishing in the United Kingdom. The prize is of great significance for writers, publishers, and readers. This is a much sought-after mark of distinction. 

1973– James Gordon Farrell – ‘The Siege of Krishnapur‘ 

"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 filter in from afar, and yet the members of the colonial community remain confident of their military and, above all, moral superiority. But when they find themselves under actual siege, the true character of their dominion - at once brutal, blundering, and wistful - is soon revealed." "The Siege of Krishnapur is a companion to Troubles, about the Easter 1916 rebellion in Ireland, and The Singapore Grip, which takes place just before World War II, as the sun begins to set upon the British Empire. Together these three novels offer a picture of the follies of empire."

1978 – Iris Murdoch – ‘The Sea, the Sea’ 

Charles Arrowby, leading light of England's theatrical set, retires from glittering London to an isolated home by the sea. He plans to write a memoir about his great love affair with Clement Makin, his mentor both professionally and personally, and to amuse himself with Lizzie, an actress he has strung along for many years. None of his plans work out, and his memoir evolves into a riveting chronicle of the strange events and unexpected visitors--some real, some spectral--that disrupt his world and shake his oversized ego to its very core.

In exposing the jumble of motivations that drive Arrowby and the other characters, Iris Murdoch lays bare "the truth of untruth"--the human vanity, jealousy, and lack of compassion behind the disguises they present to the world. Played out against a vividly rendered landscape and filled with allusions to myth and magic, Charles's confrontation with the tidal rips of love and forgiveness is one of Murdoch's most moving and powerful novels.

1993 – Roddy Doyle – ‘Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha‘ 

"Sometimes when nothing happened it was really getting ready to happen." Irish Paddy rampages through Barrytown streets with like-minded hooligans, playing cowboys, etching names in wet concrete, setting fires. The gang are not bad boys, just restless. When his parents argue, Paddy stays up all night to keep them safe. Change always comes, not always for the better.

2005 – John Banville – ‘The Sea’  

In this luminous new novel about love, loss, and the unpredictable power of memory, John Banville introduces us to Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child to cope with the recent loss of his wife. It is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time. What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, gorgeously written novel among the finest we have had from this masterful writer.

IRELAND LIT GUIDE

Man Booker Prize 1973 / The Siege of Krishnapur by JB Farrell

MAN BOOKER PRIZE 1973

Booker club: The Siege of Krishnapur

Looking back at the Booker: JG Farrell

Its unforgivingly exact portrait of the British in 19th century India makes it probably the best Booker winner I've read yet

In the mid-1970s, the Booker panel were suckers for punishment. The year after John Berger threw his award in their faces (or more accurately, threw it at the Black Panthers, knowing how much annoyance that would cause) the prize went to the equally subversive JG Farrell. At the ceremony he pointedly remarked that he was going to use the money they'd give him to research "commercial exploitation" and noted that: "Every year, the Booker brothers see their prize wash up a monster more horrid than the last."

Once again, it can only be assumed that the prize committee must have had some inkling of what was coming. The Siege Of Krishnapur might not be so explicitly Marxist as G, but as an exploration of the past and, by association, contemporary values, the book is just as incendiary, and just as uncompromising.

The siege of the fictional town of Krishnapur that Farrell describes was explicitly based on the real experiences of British subjects during the Indian rebellion of 1857. (More commonly know as "the Indian Mutiny", a semantic minefield that gives a measure of the kind of territory Farrell was charging into.)

The inspiration is a diary kept by Maria Germon, a young woman who had been through the siege of Lucknow. Farrell spins off from this to give an account not so much of the military tactics and feats of daring associated with warfare as day-to-day life under siege conditions. As such it's a dazzling success. The sights and smells of the siege are vividly conjured. The stench of putrefaction permeates all the later stages of the book, while horrific observations like those about carrion birds so bloated on corpses they ignore the huge piles of sheep offal festering inside the town are deliberately made to feel mundane, as is the stark fact that everyone is growing visibly thinner by the day.

Troubles is the first in JG Farrell's (above) trilogy on the British empire, which also includes The Siege of Krishnapur and The Singapore Grip. Photograph: Jane Bown

Equally effective is the exploration of how and why these starched Victorians start to wilt, and where their breaking point lies. Farrell mercilessly strips his characters of their defences and batters their values with something approaching glee. Here's how he describes the decline of the town's leader, the Collector: "From the farmyard in which his certitudes perched like fat chickens, every night of the siege, one or two were carried off in the jaws of rationalism and despair."

Farrell said that he wanted to show "yesterday reflected in today's consciousness", but by association, of course, he also holds a glass up to the modern world. His comically detailed descriptions of various residents' losses of faith - coupled with their outlandish religious beliefs and the way they adhere to now discredited theories like phrenology - forces us into a hard look at the accepted wisdom of the modern world (say, the immediacy of global warming, or the need to worship Radiohead). I for one felt a shudder of new uncertainty.

Then, there is colonialism. When the audiobook of The Siege Of Krishnapur came out in 2005, a writer in the Sunday Times said: "A novel set in India in 1857, the year of the Mutiny, in which the points of view of the Indians are almost nonexistent, would be unlikely to win the Man Booker prize these days." That's perhaps worthy of a debate in itself, but it's the accusation against Farrell that interests me: the idea that, as the reviewer went on, he was guilty of "cultural imbalance". I don't buy this line at all. The fact that Indians (with the rule-proving exception of a westernised maharajah's son) are so peripheral to the action speaks volumes about the attitude of the British colonialists squirming and struggling under Farrell's microscope, not to mention the way colonialism dehumanises and brutalises the oppressor and the oppressed.

It also provokes an uncomfortable recognition about the way we still think about our colonial past. It's the fact that The Siege of Krishanpur provokes such edgy, unsettling ideas that makes me think it would be unlikely to triumph in the Booker Prize in "these days" of safe and stodgy winners, rather than any misdirected political correctness.

Finally, reading over this post, I realise that its somewhat heavy overview seriously distorts the reading experience of The Siege Of Krishnapur. This is (with the exception of a very few longeurs) an admirably smooth and light read, after all.

Yes, as Farrell himself said, it's "a novel of ideas", but it's one that he also noted can be read "as an adventure story". The book is gripping, not to mention hilarious. Jokes fly as thick and fast as the musket balls aimed at the defenders of Krishnapur, but hit their target far more regularly.

After a while it gets so that Farrell only has to mention a character's name to provoke laughter (especially Fleury, as those who have read the book will recognise). One line of dialogue at the climax of the siege really did bring tears to my eyes (a rare event), so perfect is it in its understatement and absurdity... To say more would spoil it. You'll just have to read the book if you want to know what I'm banging on about. And if you do, I'm sure you won't regret it. I'm tempted to say that this is the best Booker winner I've read so far.

THE GUARDIAN

Man Booker Prize

1969 Something to Answer For by PH Newby
1970 The Elected Member by Bernice Rubens
1971 In a Free State by VS Naipul
1972 G by John Berger
1973 The Siege of Krishnapur by JG Farrell

1978 The sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch

1979 Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald

1980 Rites of Passage by William Golding

1987 Moon Tiger by Penelope Livery

1988 Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

1992 The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

1996 Last Orders by Graham Swift

Lost Man Booker Prize / Troubles by JG Farrell / Review by Sam Jordison

LOST MAN BOOKER PRIZE

Looking back at the Lost Booker: Troubles by JG Farrell

The Lost Booker prize has brought Troubles, JG Farrell's great novel on crumbling empire, back into the spotlight - and not before time

"There's no avoiding it. JG Farrell was a genius."

Sam Jordison

Thu 15 Apr 2010

Given that JG Farrell denounced the Booker organisation when they gave him the prize for The Siege Of Krishnapur in 1973, it would be interesting to hear what he'd have to say about the inclusion of Troubles on the Lost Booker shortlist. Alas, we'll never know. But it is at least safe to say that in the last few years his posthumous fame has received a real boost, thanks to Booker. And for that, the organisation should be praised.

John Banville / JG Farrell / Troubles

Troubles by JG Farrell

Introduction by John Banville

INTRODUCTION IN DEREK MAHON’S great poem A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford, a pair of travelers find themselves “Deep in the grounds of a burnt-out hotel, / Among the bathtubs and the washbasins”; forcing open a long-locked door, they come upon a host of mushrooms crowding in the darkness. They have been there, the poet imagines, for decades, waiting for the blessed light to break in upon their fetid, liminal world: 

“Save us, save us,” they seem to say, 

“Let not the god abandon us 

Who have come so far in darkness and in pain. 

We too had our lives to live . . .” 

Lost Man Booker Prize / JG Farrell / Troubles

LOST MAN BOOKER PRIZE

TROUBLES

by J.G. Farrell

Introduction by John Banville

1919: After surviving the Great War, Major Brendan Archer makes his way to Ireland, hoping to discover whether he is indeed betrothed to Angela Spencer, whose Anglo-Irish family owns the once-aptly-named Majestic Hotel in Kilnalough. But his fiancée is strangely altered and her family’s fortunes have suffered a spectacular decline. The hotel’s hundreds of rooms are disintegrating on a grand scale; its few remaining guests thrive on rumors and games of whist; herds of cats have taken over the Imperial Bar and the upper stories; bamboo shoots threaten the foundations; and piglets frolic in the squash court. Meanwhile, the Major is captivated by the beautiful and bitter Sarah Devlin. As housekeeping disasters force him from room to room, outside the order of the British Empire also totters: there is unrest in the East, and in Ireland itself the mounting violence of “the troubles.”

JG Farrell's Lost Man Booker prize for Troubles / A literary resurrection

JG Farrell's Lost Man Booker prize for Troubles – a literary resurrection

Winning the Lost Man Booker prize is a deserved reward for an author whose reputation is still growing 30 years after his death

Claire Armitstead
Thu 20 May 2010

I

n the post-Warhol world, where any wannabe can grab 15 minutes of literary fame, it's a rare writer indeed whose reputation is still growing 30 years after his death. All the more reason to raise a glass to JG Farrell, the curmudgeonly Irish Liverpudlian whose posterity began in earnest when his novel The Siege of Krishnapur became the word-of-mouth discovery of the Booker of Bookers in 2008.

News that Troubles – the precursor to The Siege of Krishnapur in Farrell's Empire trilogy – has secured the public vote to win the Lost Booker will not come as a surprise to any who read their way through all the shortlisted novels. But to say that Farrell is a predictable winner is to undervalue his extraordinary resurrection and what it says about readers' continuing ability to recognise a great book when they see one. Troubles is a work of characteristic depth and humour, which views the decline of the British empire through the prism of a decaying seaside hotel – pointedly named the Majestic – in Wexford.

Farrell's gift was the ability to immerse himself so thoroughly in his worlds, whether early 20th-century Ireland or mid-19th century India, that he never seems to preach as he tackles the big issues of race, culture and class. His drowning at 44 came when his star was at its height, after decades toiling away in obscurity. It is wonderful that his writing is winning new admirers.

THE GUARDIAN