The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell

So it did win.  Hilary Mantel’s ‘Bring Up The Bodies’ was announced as the 2012 winner of The Man Booker Prize, and so with slight reluctance it gets added to the list of books I have still to read.  I am pleased that she is the first woman to win the prize twice and obviously I will withhold judgement until I actually read the novel, but as this is going to be a trilogy (!) couldn’t she just have won once as recognition of the series?!

Well, on to one of the other authors to have won the award twice (although in rather an unusual way as Farrell won his second prize as the ‘Lost Booker’; more on the that in a later post).  ‘The Siege of Krishnapur’ chronicles the siege of the fictional town from the British perspective during the 1857 Indian Rebellion.

The narrative circulates amongst the various British characters as they adjust from their settled lives before the Rebellion, to the chaos of defending their way of life and then their lives while besieged by ‘native sepoys’.  I’m not sure whether Farrell is trying to make a point about colonial rule in India by making this novel rather ridiculous, but its mocking tone definitely detracts from the story.  The characters felt like caricatures, superficial despite their thoughts and feelings of the events providing the narrative.  In addition, moments detailing Victorian aspirations and conventions, instead of providing depth and context, became tiresome in Farrell’s hands.  It appeared that the author had researched particular topics such as theories about the spread of cholera or phrenology, chose a character to recite his findings, and there resulted a rather artificial spewing of facts on the page.  Moreover, I feel that the book would have benefited from a map to show the layout of the besieged town and its improvised defences, as I found Farrell’s descriptions to be unsuccessful in their depiction of conveying either the infrastructure or the atmosphere of the siege.

Overall I found this to be a rather mediocre offering as a Booker Prize winner which was disappointing as the premise of ‘The Siege of Krishnapur’ should have translated into compelling subject matter, but I found Farrell’s writing to be inadequate.