Troubles
Winner of the Lost Man Booker Prize 1970
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Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE 1970 BOOKER PRIZE
'And so at the Majestic everything returned to the way it had been before. The gleaming tiles became dulled. Sofas as sleek as prize cattle lost their glow.'
1919, the Majestic Hotel in Kinalough, Ireland. Haunted war veteran Major Brendan Archer arrives to marry Angela Spencer, daughter of the house. But his fiancée is strangely altered, and her family's fortunes have suffered a spectacular decline.
The hotel's hundreds of rooms are disintegrating; its few remaining guests thrive on rumours and games of whist; herds of cats have taken over the Imperial Bar; bamboo shoots threaten the foundations; and piglets frolic in the squash court. And outside the order of the British Empire totters, as the violence of 'the troubles' mounts.
'A work of genius' Guardian
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Set in 1919, at the outset the Irish War of Independence, this darkly funny farce evokes the chaos and folly of the final hours of British rule with madcap humour and strikingly precise prose. Originally published in 1970, Troubles—the first book in J.G. Farrell’s wry Empire Trilogy—was awarded the one-off Lost Man Booker Prize in 2010. It follows World War I veteran Major Brendan Archer, who returns from the western front to find his fiancée, Angela Spencer, ailing and her dysfunctional family reeling from the decline of the family business: the Hotel Majestic on the eastern coast of Ireland. Overrun by hordes of feral cats, the decrepit inn is host to a gaggle of eccentric castaways. Farrell’s superbly crafted novel is a tragicomic gem from a brilliant writer whose untimely death was a great loss to modern literature.
