J G Farrell Books In Order

Empire Trilogy Books In Order

  1. Troubles (1970)
  2. The Siege of Krishnapur (1973)
  3. The Singapore Grip (1978)

Novels

  1. A Girl in the Head (1967)
  2. The Hill Station (1981)

Empire Trilogy Book Covers

Novels Book Covers

J G Farrell Books Overview

Troubles

Winner of the Lost Man Booker Prize1919: 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 fianc e 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.’ Troubles is a hilarious and heartbreaking work by a modern master of the historical novel.

The Siege of Krishnapur

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.

The Singapore Grip

Singapore, 1939: life on the eve of World War II just isn’t what it used to be for Walter Blackett, head of British Singapore’s oldest and most powerful firm. No matter how forcefully the police break one strike, the natives go on strike somewhere else. His daughter keeps entangling herself with the most unsuitable beaus, while her intended match, the son of Blackett’s partner, is an idealistic sympathizer with the League of Nations and a vegetarian. Business may be booming what with the war in Europe, the Allies are desperate for rubber and helpless to resist Blackett’s price fixing and market manipulation but something is wrong. No one suspects that the world of the British Empire, of fixed boundaries between clas*ses and nations, is about to come to a terrible end. A love story and a war story, a tragicomic tale of a city under siege and a dying way of life, The Singapore Grip completes the Empire Trilogy that began with Troubles and the Booker prize winning Siege of Krishnapur.

The Hill Station

To the cool of the Simla hills comes a reluctant Dr McNab, with his wife and young niece. For Emily, romance is in the air. For the mysterious Mrs Forester, there is scandal brewing. And for the Bishop of Simla, rainclouds are not the only storms on the horizon The Hill Station is the novel on which J.G. Farrell was working at the time of his tragically early accidental death. It demonstrates powerfully what a great loss to world literature this was.

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