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Series

Empire Trilogy

J. G. Farrell’s Empire Trilogy examines three moments when British imperial confidence collides with political revolt and military collapse. Troubles is set during the Irish War of Independence, The Siege of Krishnapur during the Indian Rebellion of 1857, and The Singapore Grip during the Japanese advance through Malaya and the fall of Singapore.

The novels are connected by theme rather than recurring characters. Each places an isolated British community inside a decaying hotel, besieged residency or commercial colony and uses dark comedy, social observation and catastrophe to expose the assumptions of class, race and progress that sustained imperial rule.

Reading order

Books in this series (3 books)

Troubles cover

#1 – Troubles

J. G. Farrell

In 1919 Major Brendan Archer travels to the Irish town of Kilnalough to visit Angela Spencer, the woman he believes became his fiancée during the First World War. He finds her family’s once-grand Majestic Hotel decaying around them, its rooms overtaken by vegetation, elderly residents and…

The Siege of Krishnapur cover

#2 – The Siege of Krishnapur

J. G. Farrell

Krishnapur, 1857. As rebellion spreads across northern India, the British residents of a fictional district retreat behind the walls of the Residency. The Collector, confident in Victorian reason and progress, organises the defence while soldiers, officials, clergy, doctors and civilians attempt to preserve the routines of…

The Singapore Grip cover

#3 – The Singapore Grip

J. G. Farrell

Singapore, 1937. Matthew Webb arrives from England to join the Blackett family’s rubber business and encounters a colonial economy built on trade, labour and assumptions of permanent British power. His idealism, Walter Blackett’s commercial calculations and competing relationships with Joan Blackett and the Eurasian Vera Chiang…