Having re-read and loved the first of Farrell’s Empire Trilogy, Troubles, I decided to read the remaining two books in the trilogy. There is no set order to it, but the second to be published was The Siege of Krishnapur, which won the Booker Prize in 1973. Whereas Troubles is set in 1919 Ireland, The Siege of Krishnapur takes us to the India of 1857. Very different places, but both suffering from the inevitable structural failures at the heart of the British Empire.
The Collector of Krishnapur, Mr Hopkins, first senses the danger of revolt in the distribution of chapatis in his dispatch box and other unexpected places. His colleagues and superiors do not take him seriously, and he is forced to tour the offices of bureaucrats and other important personages in Calcutta in order to convince them of the danger. He does so without success. It is in Calcutta that we first encounter the idealistic hero of the novel, Fleury. Running throughout the novel is the importance placed on ‘progress’, exemplified by the Great Exhibition of 1851, which Hopkins had attended. He misses no opportunity to regale the British residents of Krishnapur of the wonders he found there. This fascination extends to Indians too: there is an extended scene that takes us through the painstaking production of a daguerreotype by the son of the local Maharajah’s son, Hari.
The mutiny comes from the local garrison of Indian troops in the service of the East India Company, called ’sepoys’. The British inhabitants retreat behind the hastily erected fortifications, dug at the order of Hopkins, but these are barely enough to keep even the most casual attack at bay. Here again, Farrell uses his ironic voice and sense of the ludicrousness of the situation to great advantage. Once again there is a parade of memorable characters, none more so that the Padre who engages in heated disputes with anyone who’ll listen. There are the two doctors who argue over the heads of the entire community about the causes of cholera – one thinks it’s infected drinking water, the other that a ‘cholera cloud’ hovers over the infected area and pays for his wrong-headedness with his life. Although their disputes are rooted in historical fact (carefully researched), they never lose their relevance to the novel or its themes. There’s the magistrate, self-satisifed and repulsive, and there’s Fleury himself, at first a dilettante and later a genuine, if unlikely, hero.
As with Troubles the emblem of decay is everywhere – this time even more explicit as the British have nowhere to bury their dead, so they end up just slinging them over the walls. The stench of putrefaction is everywhere. Farrell’s prose has a wonderful sense of place, and the disintegration of the community and its values is subtly conveyed by the writing. It is also wonderfully funny, with almost no character escaping Farrell’s scorn and ridicule. The final retreat through the residency, using everything imaginable, cutlery included, to fight the sepoys is as brilliant a set piece as the catastrophic ball in Troubles.
The Siege of Krishnapur is another masterpiece. As with Troubles, I recommend it to everyone.
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