The Siege of Krishnapur. Troubles: J. Farrell

Two very different Booker-Prizewinning novels about the end of empire by Anglo-Irish writer J. G. Farrell are juxtaposed in this volume. Witty, shocking, exciting and vividly realistic, The Siege of Krishnapur is set in the fictional town of that name where a British garrison withstands a four-month siege by a sepoy army during the Indian Mutiny of 1857. Undergoing terrible privations, the characters find their ideals tested and their smug assumptions of military and moral superiority severely shaken. In the elegiac tragicomedy Troubles, Major Brendan Archer travels to Ireland in the aftermath of World War I in order to meet his fiancee Angela in a remote seaside hotel owned by her father. Though events take an unexpected turn, Archer lingers in Kilnalough, captivated by the Majestic and its inhabitants, and seemingly unaware of the approaching political storm as Ireland dissolves into revolt and civil war. Introducer John Sutherland describes Farrell, who died at the early age of 44 in 1979, as 'one of the finest post-colonial novelists'. The proof is in these pages.