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The Siege of Krishnapur

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The Siege of Krishnapur

By: J. G. Farrell
Narrated by: Peter Wickham
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About this listen

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.

1973, The Booker Prize, Winner

©1996 J. G. Farrell (P)2018 Orion Publishing Group Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Siege

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Critic reviews

While I can't categorically state it's the best book ever, I find it hard to think of one that I prefer. One that does more as a work of fiction, or that says more about our flawed humanity . . . The Siege of Krishnapur is a superb portrayal of physical horrors and psychological fallout . . . [It] is wonderfully funny, written with devastating wit and rambunctious humanity. I can't praise it enough - and I can't push it enough (Sam Jordison)
Inspired, funny but ultimately tragic look at colonialism in India. It has an unusual exuberance (Mariella Frostrup)
All stars
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beautifully written and perfectly narrated. another Farrell classic. Peter Wickham's range of voices, across class and gender, is remarkable

classic

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I thoroughly enjoyed the beginning of this book. I greatly enjoyed the ending of this book. However, by about two thirds of the way through I began to feel that *I* was under seige and that I might never reach the end.

I cannot decide if this was very skillful on the part of the author or very lax on the part of their editor.

Impressively exciting and dull at the same time.

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Each description was poetry
Beautifully written but intensely boring
Sets the scene and has some merit but not an enjoyable read

Couldn’t wait for the end

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The story was well told and captured the era and the scene so well . The narration was first class .

Very good

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Narrator incredibly well suited to the book, which is astonishing in its combination of humour, horror and observation. Fantastic

Exceptional narration of a really unique book

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A favourite book, bought in Audible format to refresh myself ahead of a book-group discussion.
Generally a good, gently sensitive reading with a clear voice and diction.
However I was disappointed by the reader’s chosen manner when giving voice to the dialogue of the women characters of the novel. Other male readers/actors often manage this better. He used a very fey falsetto which gave too much of an impression of vacuity; no matter what was being said. Admittedly some of the women are witless, but, by no means all - it tainted all of the female utterances.

Audible: The Siege of Krishnapur

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The writing has a controlled tone, ironic, cool, sometimes laugh out loud funny. A shocking yet familiar tale of imperial folly. Characters of depth and complexity, revealed through the mores of their time. The story gripped me. The reading was a little jarring, especially the falsetto and drippy women’s voices.

Deeply ironic picture of Empire

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The Booker Prize winner of 1973. I think a historical novel, set in the India, concentrating on the story of white settlers would struggle to make the long list today. And in someways that's fair - I remember Salman Rushdie criticising The Jewel in the Crown TV series (based on Paul Scott's Raj Quartet) because it considered only the stories of white people to be important. That's certainly true of The Siege of Krishnapur - the most finely drawn characters are white males: Collector Hopkins, Harry the soldier, Fleury the would be poet turned soldier, the 2 doctors, the padre and the magistrate. Less trouble is taken with the white women and few of the native characters even merit a name - Hari, the Maharaja's heir being an exception. So it surprised me to discover that Rushdie considered that, but for Farrell's untimely death at 44, he would have gone on to become "one of the really major novelists of the English Language."

Farrell is not Kipling, his style owes more to the irreverence of Carry on Up the Khyber than to Kim. It's wickedly funny and Farrell does not mourn the passing of the British Empire. The book was also shortlisted for the 2008 Best of the Booker but lost out, appropriately to Rushdie's Midnight's Children.

Carry on at Krishnapur

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Vividly recreates the world of British colonial life with all its Victorian manners, absurdity and courage.

A gripping story told with wit

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I like many things about this. I like the humour and the way Farrell uses the benefit of hindsight, subtly to underline how and why things went so wrong, leading to the mutiny of the sepoys. I like the way the characters are set up and develop. There is quite a lot of bloodshed but it is so matter of fact that I didn’t find it too stomach churning. Farrell could have been a bit more concise - I didn’t really feel the need for a full exposition of John Snow’s epidemiological studies on cholera.

The reading was generally very good but bore out my theory that every narrator has at least one irritating mispronunciation. In this case it was cantonment, a word that must appear on nearly every page of the printed book. Both the Oxford dictionary and I believe it is pronounced can-TONN-ment but it was consistently delivered as can-tooon-ment. Why? Very irritating.

Great tale

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