Winner of the Lost Man Booker Prize, this darkly hilarious book about the Irish war for independence takes place in a crumbling hotel on Ireland's west coast, a place where madness and brutality have begun to reign.
1919: After surviving the Great War, Major Brendan Archer makes his way to Ireland, hoping to discover whether he is indeed betrothed to Angela Spencer, whose Anglo-Irish family owns the once-aptly-named Majestic Hotel in Kilnalough. But his fiancee is strangely altered and her family's fortunes have suffered a spectacular decline. The hotel's hundreds of rooms are disintegrating on a grand scale; its few remaining guests thrive on rumors and games of whist; herds of cats have taken over the Imperial Bar and the upper stories; bamboo shoots threaten the foundations; and piglets frolic in the squash court. Meanwhile, the Major is captivated by the beautiful and bitter Sarah Devlin. As housekeeping disasters force him from room to room, outside the order of the British Empire also totters: there is unrest in the East, and in Ireland itself the mounting violence of "the troubles."
Troubles is a hilarious and heartbreaking work by a modern master of the historical novel.
Show moreWinner of the Lost Man Booker Prize, this darkly hilarious book about the Irish war for independence takes place in a crumbling hotel on Ireland's west coast, a place where madness and brutality have begun to reign.
1919: After surviving the Great War, Major Brendan Archer makes his way to Ireland, hoping to discover whether he is indeed betrothed to Angela Spencer, whose Anglo-Irish family owns the once-aptly-named Majestic Hotel in Kilnalough. But his fiancee is strangely altered and her family's fortunes have suffered a spectacular decline. The hotel's hundreds of rooms are disintegrating on a grand scale; its few remaining guests thrive on rumors and games of whist; herds of cats have taken over the Imperial Bar and the upper stories; bamboo shoots threaten the foundations; and piglets frolic in the squash court. Meanwhile, the Major is captivated by the beautiful and bitter Sarah Devlin. As housekeeping disasters force him from room to room, outside the order of the British Empire also totters: there is unrest in the East, and in Ireland itself the mounting violence of "the troubles."
Troubles is a hilarious and heartbreaking work by a modern master of the historical novel.
Show moreJ.G.Farrell (1935–1979) was born with a caul, long
considered a sign of good fortune. Academically and athletically
gifted, Farrell grew up in England and Ireland. In 1956, during his
first term at Oxford, he suffered what seemed a minor injury on the
rugby pitch. Within days, however, he was diagnosed with polio,
which nearly killed him and left him permanently weakened.
Farrell’s early novels, which include The Lung and A
Girl in the Head,have been overshadowed by his Empire
Trilogy—Troubles, the Booker Prize–winning Siege of
Krishnapur, and The Singapore Grip (all three are
published by NYRB Classics). In early 1979, Farrell
bought a farmhouse in Bantry Bay on the Irish coast. “I’ve been
trying to write,” he admitted, “but there are so many competing
interests–?the prime one at the moment is fishing off the rocks… .
Then a colony of bees has come to live above my back door and I’m
thinking of turning them into my feudal retainers.” On August 11,
Farrell was hit by a wave while fishing and was washed out to sea.
His body was found a month later. A biography
of J.G. Farrell, J.G. Farrell: The Making of a Writerby
Lavinia Greacen, was published by Bloomsbury in 1999.
John Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. He is
the author of many novels, including The Book of
Evidence, The Untouchable, and Eclipse. Banville’s
novel The Sea was awarded the 2005 Man Booker Prize. His
most recent book is Mrs. Osmond. On occasion he writes under the
pen name Benjamin Black.
We find in Farrell’s novels links between the depicted colonial
past and the postcolonial present that yield an abundance of
ironies and ambiguous parallels.
—Ivan Kreilkamp, Public Books
Remarkable … Mr. Farrell deserves high praise for this novel. It is
subtly modulated, richly textured, sad, funny, and altogether
memorable.
—Times Literary Supplement
A tour de force … sad, tragic, also very funny.
—The Guardian
Farrell wrote superbly; all his books had a quality that hallmarks
great literary talent—he could “do” texture. This album—which is
what Troubles feels like—records the same Anglo-Irish as Elizabeth
Bowen knew and belonged to. As with Bowen, this feels like the real
thing (which is all a novel has to do). Always judge a writer by
his grasp of what he doesn’t know: Farrell died young yet his old
people are almost his best creations.
—Frank Delaney, The Guardian
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