The Siege of Krishnapur, Troubles

Two stunning, Booker Prize-winning historical novels that vividly chronicle the crumbling edges of the British Empire in India and Ireland--in one Contemporary Classics hardcover. Inspired by historical events, The Siege of Krishnapuris the mesmerizing tale of a British outpost, under siege during the Indian Mutiny of 1857, whose residents find their smug assumptions of moral and military superiority and their rigid class barriers under fire-literally and figuratively. The hero of Troubles,having survived the battles of World War I, makes his way to Ireland in 1919, in search of his once-wealthy fianc e. What he finds is her family's enormous seaside hotel in a spectacular state of decline, overgrown and overrun by herds of cats and pigs and the few remaining guests. From this strange perch, moving from room to room as the hotel falls down around him, he witnesses the distant tottering of the Empire in the East and the rise of the violent "Troubles" in Ireland.

J. G. FARRELL (1935-1979) was an Anglo-Irish novelist who grew up in England and Ireland. At the age of forty-four he was hit by a wave while fishing on the Irish coast and was washed out to sea.
 
JOHN SUTHERLAND is the author of seventeen books on literature and language, a regular columnist for The Guardian, and an emeritus professor at University College, London.
 
Introduction by John Sutherland