This won the Booker Prize back in 1973. A brilliant, dark humorous book about the decline of colonialism and an exploration of class, race and culture in general. Great stuff.

Synopsis

A special limited edition of nine classic novels produced to coincide with Weidenfeld & Nicolson's 60th anniversary. Designed by the award-winning advertising agency Fallon with special endpapers commissioned from ground-breaking artists. The endpapers for this title have been designed by Mikko Rantanen.

In the Spring of 1857, with India on the brink of a violent and bloody mutiny, Krishnapur is a remote town on the vast North Indian plain. For the British there, life is orderly and genteel. Then the sepoys at the nearest military cantonment rise in revolt and the British community retreats with shock into the Residency. They prepare to fight for their lives with what weapons they can muster. As food and ammunition grow short, the Residency, its defences battered by shot and shell and eroded by the rains, becomes ever more vulnerable.

The Siege of Krishnapur is a modern classic of narrative excitement that also digs deep to explore some fundamental questions of civilisation and life.

Reviews

"Inspired, funny but ultimately tragic look at colonialism in India. It has an unusual exuberence" Mariella Frostrup,  INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
 
"Had there been any justice, [this] should really have won this year's Booker of Bookers" John Conolly, IRISH TIMES
 
"a darkly funny book, whose unsentimental, omniscient narrator scrutinises the self-delusions of the colonialists" GUARDIAN

About the Author

J.G. Farrell was born in Liverpool in 1935 and spent a good deal of his life abroad, including periods in France and North America, and then settled in London where he wrote most of his novels. In April 1979 he went to live in County Cork where only four months later he was drowned in a fishing accident. More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation