Troubles by Jg Farrell
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 fianc e 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.
J.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 Writer by Lavinia Greacen, was published by Bloomsbury in 1999. Derek Mahon was born in Belfast in 1941, studied at Trinity College, Dublin, and the Sorbonne, and has held journalistic and academic appointments in London and New York. He has received numerous awards, including the Irish Times/Aer Lingus Poetry Prize, the Irish Academy of Letters Award, the Scott Moncrieff and Aristeion translation prizes, and Lannan and Guggenheim fellowships. His Collected Poems were published in 1999 and Harbour Lights, a volume of new poetry, was published in 2006.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780006540465 |
| ISBN 10 | 0006540465 |
| Title | Troubles |
| Author | J G Farrell |
| Series | Flamingo S |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding type | Paperback |
| Publisher | HarperCollins Publishers |
| Year published | 1984-05-10 |
| Number of pages | 448 |
| Prizes | Winner of Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize 1971, Winner of Lost Man Booker Prize 1970/2010 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |