The Siege of Krishnapur

by J. G. Farrell, Tim Pigott-Smith (Read by)

Overview

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 The Siege of Krishnapur, widely considered to the one of the finest British novels of the last fifty years. A witty and individual take on the many traditions and follies of Empire, it is also a gripping account of survival under siege, illuminating how extreme conditions can influence and affect people's behaviour and the human spirit.

Reader Tim Pigott-Smith is a renowned British film and television actor.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781904605416
Publisher:	Canongate Books
Publication date:	09/28/2005
Edition description:	Main ed.
Pages:	1
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 5.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

J.G. Farrell (1935-79) was a highly-acclaimed Anglo-Irish novelist who won the 1973 Booker Prize and the Lost Man Booker Prize.

Editorial Reviews

A novel of quite outstanding quality.

The Times

Tim Pigott-Smith...extracts maximum impact from Farrell's wicked comedy and deft characterisation.

The Sunday Times

Tim Pigott-Smith's tone...is beautifully judged.

The Guardian

"Suspense and subtlety, humour and horror, the near-neighbourliness of heroism and insanity: it is rare to find such divergent elements being controlled in one hand and being raced, as it were, in one yoke. But Farrell manages just this here: his imaginative insight and technical virtuosity combine to produce a novel of quite outstanding quality."
— The Times (London)

"The magnificient passages of action in The Siege of Krishnapur, its gallery of characters, its unashamedly detailed and fascinating dissertations on cholera, gunnery, phrenology, the prodigal inventiveness of its no doubt also well-documented scenes should satisfy the most exacting and voracious reader. 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."
— John Spurling, The New Statesman

"…a masterpiece as unclassifiable as Giuseppe Lampedusa’s novel The Leopard or Penelope Fitzgerald’s novel, The Blue Flower. A historical novel, a comedy of manners, an intellectual history, an evocation of scene: It is all of these. But it is the inimitable combination of these ingredients that gives the book its perculiar savor."
— Columbus Dispatch

From the Publisher