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The Siege of Krishnapur (New York Review Books Classics) | 
 enlarge | Author: J.g. Farrell
Creator: Pankaj Mishra
Publisher: NYRB Classics
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
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Rating:  35 reviews
Sales Rank: 18728
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 376
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.8
ISBN: 159017092X
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9781590170922
ASIN: 159017092X
Publication Date: July 31, 2004
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Amazon.com Review
"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, they swept the countryside like an epidemic." Students of history will recognize 1857 as the year of the Sepoy rebellion in India--an uprising of native soldiers against the British, brought on by Hindu and Muslim recruits' belief that the rifle cartridges they were provided had been greased with pig or cow fat. This seminal event in Anglo-Indian relations provides the backdrop for J.G. Farrell's Booker Prize-winning exploration of race, culture, and class, The Siege of Krishnapur. Like the mysteriously appearing chapatis, life in British India seems, on the surface, innocuous enough. Farrell introduces us gradually to a large cast of characters as he paints a vivid portrait of the Victorians' daily routines that are accompanied by heat, boredom, class consciousness, and the pursuit of genteel pastimes intended for cooler climates. Even the siege begins slowly, with disquieting news of massacres in cities far away. When Krishnapur itself is finally attacked, the Europeans withdraw inside the grounds of the Residency where very soon conditions begin to deteriorate: food and water run out, disease is rampant, people begin to go a little mad. Soon the very proper British are reduced to eating insects and consorting across class lines. Farrell's descriptions of life inside the Residency are simultaneously horrifying and blackly humorous. The siege, for example, is conducted under the avid eyes of the local populace, who clearly anticipate an enjoyable massacre and thus arrive every morning laden with picnic lunches (plainly visible to the starving Europeans). By turns witty and compassionate, The Siege of Krishnapur comprises the best of all fictional worlds: unforgettable characters, an epic adventure, and at its heart a cultural clash for the ages. Quite simply, this is a splendid novel. --Alix Wilber
Product Description
A darkly humorous picture of the follies of empire, still as relevant as ever, The Siege of Krishnapur is thought by many to be J. G. Farrell's finest book. Set in India in 1857 (the year of the Great Mutiny, when the Indian sepoys rose in bloody rebellion against their complacent British overlords), Farrell's novel concerns a remote Victorian outpost in the subcontinent. Rumors of strife filter in from afar, but the colonial community remains confident of its superior values, culture, and, of course, military strength - that is, until it is actually under siege. Then gaping cracks begin to open in the veneer of civilization.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 30 more reviews...
 Imaginative Historical Recreation November 25, 2008
There was much here to enjoy: the imaginative recreation of the British in India, their ways of thinking and behavior. The thrill of the action, which began picking up appreciably one-quarter of the way into the book. The author's skilled use of detail, to the extent that the reader could see, smell and hear what went on. The varied cast of characters with their individual voices and concerns. The impact of the siege on customs and proprieties. The ironies throughout, both subtle and unsubtle. The blindness of so many of the characters, hemmed in by narrow-minded conventions. And one character's progression from a firm belief in the superiority of European civilization and the perfection of science and morality toward skepticism and tolerance, after a loss of certitude.
The author was trying in part to show that a nation "does not create itself according to its best ideas, but is shaped by other forces, of which it has little knowledge." But surely the best ideas also help shape a nation as it evolves, and some progress has been achieved after all? And why should a belief in the best of what European civilization has contributed be thrown over because of what was done in India? Still, there was much in this novel to enjoy.
Relevant, lively, thought-provoking novel of ideas amidst action October 26, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This 1973 Booker Prize winner explores British India through a microcosm: colonials and their loyal natives under assault by bombardment, starvation, cholera during the 1857 mutiny. It has both an old-fashioned flavor in its editorial asides by the omniscient and urbane narrator, and a modern wryness in its detached observations about the Anglo-Indian attitudes towards what they perceived as their civilizing mission. Less famous than E. M. Forster's "A Passage to India," nevertheless it may-- for its rousing battle scenes full of a "carnal barricade;" carrion dogs; ingenious uses for electro-metal plated heads of Keats, the Bard, and Voltaire; and more artillery-fueled mayhem-- excite readers more. If you've been wanting a philosophical reflection on Victorian progress, secularism vs. faith, imperial expansion vs. native resistance, and how medicine gradually advances over superstition: all these topics integrate entertainingly and instructively into a novel that also recalls a near-contemporary, John Fowles' "The French Lieutenant's Woman."
Farrell's distinction in delineating the Age of Doubt from Forster before him, Fowles next to him, and Michel Faber's fine novel "The Crimson Petal and the White" after him? While all these are favorite novels of mine, the Anglo-Irish Farrell manages to offer a sympathetic first-person indirect narration that reflects his near-countryman, Joyce. Farrell plays the reactions of the Collector, the main character here, against the atheistic and bitter (if often mordantly funny) Magistrate, the dueling doctors Dunstaple and McNab, a woefully earnest Padre, and the poetaster aesthete, Fleury. All these, as in more somnolent novels of ideas, speak their set-pieces intelligently. The difference: Farrell enlivens their thoughts. It's as if Thomas Love Peacock moved his Romantic-era figures into the colonial dust of faraway India and left dreamers, lovesick swains, practical company men, and an array of capable and hapless womenfolk to survive amidst plagues and grapeshot.
Examples abound of the verve of much of this intricate, yet direct fictional exposure of ideals as they blunder under fire. "But the Collector admired pretty women and could not feel hostile to them for very long. If they were pretty he swiftly found other virtues in them which he would not have noticed had they been ugly." (27) Fleury finds by mid-century that the sensitive type of male's out of style with the young ladies: "The effect, or lack of it, that you have on the opposite sex is important because it tells you whether or not you are in touch with the spirit of the times, of which the opposite sex is invariably the custodian." (33)
An amazing episode recounts how Fleury and a young native scion, Hari, clash over the advantages of inventions. Hari speaks in a fluent Indian English, struggling to articulate his love of the wares of such emporia as the Great Exhibition of 1851 at London's Crystal Palace, a theme that underlies the conversations of many of the British men in the novel. Fleury insists that the railroad will only bring to India what it brought to Britain: soulless bustle. Hari counters that easing labor, manufacturing food, or taking a daguerrotype is progress, and as worthy of praise as Plato. A flustered Fleury must tell Hari that he's not been able to find a bride yet: "Hari's brow puckered at this, for it was evident that Fleury was impeded from choosing a bride by being unable to find one suited to some special requirements of his own, beyond the usual ones of birth and dowry ...but what these might possibly be he had not the faintest idea; in this matter Hari's incomprehension was shared by Fleury's own relations in Norfolk and Devon." (78)
Mutual incomprehension dominates. As the novel goes on, the native revolt spreads. The local treasury's looted by traitorous sepoys: "They wore 'dhotis' instead of uniforms and carried heavy, oddly-shaped burdens on their shoulders and around their necks; they had broached a cart-load of silver rupees and filled the legs of their breeches. Now it seemed that they were staggering away with heavy, trunkless men on their shoulders." (127) As this excerpt illustrates, Farrell favors the point-of-view of the besieged as they peer out upon an unrecognizable realm they no longer rule. For, soon the British and their retinue must retreat to first the Residency and then the redoubt of the Banqueting Hall. What had graced their plush exile as stuffed owls, divans, leather books, busts of intellectuals, and heaps of correspondence bound in red tape all serve as sandbags and barricades and improvised canisters to stuff cannons against the enemy.
Most of the book takes place within the makeshift fortress. The attack comes memorably: "the rim of darkness beneath the horizon began to sparkle like a firework and immediately the air about them began to sing and howl with flying metal and chips of masonry ... then in a wave came the sound. Daubs of orange hopped at regular intervals from one end of the darkness to the other. Suddenly, a shrapnel shell landed on the corner of the verandah and all was chaos." (144)
The remainder of the story needs to be encountered directly. The tone darkens as inexorably the inhabitants of the Residency find themselves diminished by hunger, disease, and death by many kinds of assailants. I think that the register of the prose alters, and there may be too much anonymity given the cast of supporting characters; the central cast already introduced seem to live and talk in a vacuum as the plot continues, although Farrell may deliberately dampen the mood to reflect the bitter or desperate reactions of those under constant terror of sudden or lingering death. I do think Hari deserved more follow-through, and the novel does suffer slightly from an uneven focus on characters who are introduced and then forgotten about for long stretches as the siege grinds on. Also, the closing pages seem to depart with a whimper more than a bang, after the long march to the climax.
Still, despite uneven stretches, it towers above most any fiction these recent decades. It's quite an achievement, this submersion into the mental and physical despair of those about to die. When you emerge along with those who endure to find the approach of the Gilbert & Sullivanish "Relief of Krishnapur," you may hardly recognize the bedraggled survivors as those who started the novel a few months before, some who had then arrived in India so lightheartedly and naively.
P.S.: I agree with other reviewers: Lucy and the cockchafer infestation stands out as one of the most remarkable scenes I've ever found. It's Ch. 22. "The Hill Station" follows two characters here, Dr. McNab and Miriam, after they marry; this sequel was incomplete at the author's early death by drowning off the Irish coast in 1979.
Dark, bitter and wonderful. September 22, 2008
I liked the Singapore Grip, but the Siege of Krishnapur stunned me. It was wry, light and devastatingly apt at developing each character. He took no prisoners as the clueless denizens of the Raj came to realize, or not, the depth of their ignorance and folly. Loved it.
Genuinely Classic June 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Indian mutiny of 1857 sees the cantoment of Krishnapur besieged by sepoys. For three months Mr Hopkins (the collector) galvanises the British community in resisting the onslaught...
This book is superbly written and often reminds one of the style of George Elliot. It is both witty and profound and wonderfully researched and charactorized.Like the best of Elliot,Farrell uses his narrative to inform on other topics-the great cholera debate;the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace- and questions the basis of what culture actually lends to civilisation.
Books like this just don't get written these days.
The beginning of the end of themselves May 31, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Paul Scott wrote in his RAJ QUARTET that it was in India during the last days of the Raj that the British came to the end of themselves as they were. In this superb Booker Prize-winning novel written concurrently with the QUARTET (and which casts a similar cold eye towards the British imperial ambitions in India), J. G. Farrell shows how the Raj itself was formed and how it already carried within it in embryo the seeds of the destruction for the entire Empire. The novel takes place in a city in Northeastern India during 1857, the year of the Great Sepoy Rebellion: the British stationed in Krishnapur hear vague rumors of what they will call "The Mutiny" from faraway towns but are mostly unwilling to take them seriously. The ensuing siege they endure carries on for months as they wait for help to relieve them; though slowly forced to an absolute subsistence level--and then to even less--, they refuse to relinquish the habits of social conditioning that have made them already who they are. Social snobbery, physical modesty, gender segregation: all remain firmly ensconced even as their physical conditions start deteriorating so greatly they start dying in large numbers.
The novel's subject would seem to suggest that the novel would make for almost unbearable reading. Oddly, it does not, because the characters of the novel (who are almost entirely British) maintain such a droll and uncomprehending attitude towards their conditions, no matter how desperate things seem. Thus, since Farrell focalizes his narrative mostly through their thoughts, everything seems unreal throughout the entire siege and not quite so nightmarish as it might have been had he used a more distanced third-person narrator. The work is in part a parody of old-fashioned "Mutiny novels," so you should know that the ending is very much in keeping with those kinds of novels (which proliferated throughout the Empire during the latter half of the nineteenth century); characteristically, however, Farrell puts his own intelligent spin on things, so even if the ending you had been expecting does occur it doesn't in the way you had expected. This is the second, and perhaps most famous, of the three superb works of Farrell's "Empire" trilogy which beautifully illustrates the conditions of Empire described in another nearly coeval work, Jan Morris's famous PAX BRITTANICA trilogy. It's exciting, amusing, intelligent, and greatly worth reading.
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