Masterful Recreation of the British Under Siege in the Great Mutiny

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	• The Siege of Krishnapur (New York Review Books Classics) J.G. Farrell NYRB Classics, 2004 - 376 pages average customer review:based on 33 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Genuinely Classic

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.

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Dark, bitter and wonderful.

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.

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Bringing The Indians A Superior Civilization

This is an excellent novel about the Sepoy Mutiny in India in 1857. The focus of the story is the siege of the British Civil Service enclave at Krishanpur (historically this was the siege of Lucknow). A group of Sepoy soldiers was given new rifle cartridges that were wrapped in greased paper, and the paper was removed by biting it off with one's teeth. The word spread was that this grease was animal grease, which was an insult to religion. The sepoys mutinied, killed their superior British officers, and started marauding across India.

Hearing about the mutiny the (tax) Collector in Krishnapur had ramparts built around the British buildings in Krishnapur. Shortly afterwards the Sepoys attacked in waver after wave for a period of several months. Surprisingly author Farrell describes the sufferings of those besieged with a good deal of humor, humor that pricks holes in the pompous beliefs and attitudes of 19th century British colonizers. We bring them progress, a superior civilization, yet they turn on us marvels the Collector. The condescension doesn't stop with the Indians. At one point the Collector speaks to the British women in the enclave, and silently thinks that in reality women are really useless creatures. It is the men of the world that shoulder the responsibility of getting things done. The padre runs around telling everyone that God is punishing them for their sinful behavior. A new school and an old school doctor constantly disagree over medical treatment. In perhaps the funniest scene of the book the old doctor contracts cholera, and instructs his aides to cover him with mustard plasters. The young doctor, who is aware that cholera victims die from dehydration, initiates a saline IV every time the old doc sinks into a coma. The IV brings him around, and he immediately pulls out the IV and insists on getting his mustard plasters, following which he soon sinks back into a coma. Back goes the IV and the doc becomes conscious again. This cycle goes on and on and becomes hysterically funny.

The British thought they were doing wonderful things for the Indians, but the harsh reality of it is they were creating harsh lives for their colonial subjects. The sepoys, for example, were paid near starvation wages. This is an important novel about the misguided philosophy behind imperialism. Perhaps there is a lesson here for us Americans. Should we really be focused on bringing our way of life to other countries?

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Masterful Recreation of the British Under Siege in the Great Mutiny

"The Siege of Krishnapur', the second of J.G. Farrell's now classic works on the British Empire, (see also Troubles (New York Review Books Classics) and The Singapore Grip (New York Review Books Classics)) is a fictionalized account of the Siege of Lucknow during the Great Mutiny of 1857-1858 (aka the Sepoy Rebellion). The mutiny or rebellion, depending on one's point of view, was ultimately defeated by the British and led to the replacement of East India Company rule by direct British governance under the Raj.

Farrell masterfully recreates the insular British upper-class life in India - and the siege only intensifies this insularity. As the siege drags on and on, the inhabitants strive to maintain expected standards of behavior and decorum. Farrell populates his book with interesting characters who debate and dispute morality, religion, progress, and civilization.

Excellent introductions are a hallmark of the New York Review of Books Classics and the introduction to this volume by Pankaj Mishra places the book in historical and cultural context and adds significant value.

Highest Recommendation.

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The beginning of the end of themselves

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 his thoughts, everything seems unreal throughout the entire siege and not quite so nightmarish as it might have been had he used a more distanced 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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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Winner of the booker prize.

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 an unequaled picture of the follies of empire.

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