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Indlæser... Belejringen af Krishnapur (1973)af J. G. Farrell
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Bliv medlem af LibraryThing for at finde ud af, om du vil kunne lide denne bog. Der er ingen diskussionstråde på Snak om denne bog. Fantastic read... I had this book my kindle for about half a decade but could never manage to go beyond a couple of pages. I decided to persist and finished reading it in a couple of days. I loved it. The book has all the hallmarks that would one expect from British Raj era and it is also a treatise on the White Man's Burden. This is the only time I sided with the British despite being an Indian :) ( ) This was enjoyable reading, based on the true story of the mutiny at Cawnpur. I'm surprised any English People survived at all, so vastly were they outnumbered. I can't help but wonder what did the English think would happen? Taking away a people's culture and freedom and letting them know you believe they are inferior to you? Come on! “The British could leave and half India wouldn't notice us leaving just as they didn't notice us arriving. All our reforms of administration might be reforms on the moon for all it has to do with them..” “India itself was now a different place; the fiction of happy natives being led forward along the road to civilization could no longer be sustained.” “All our actions and intentions are futile unless animated by warmth of feeling. Without love everything is a desert. Even Justice, Science, and Respectability.” India, 1857. An isolated British outpost, on the subcontinent. The British here are living a comfortable life, clutching to their noble, old-world principles. There are are hints and rumblings that an uprising is about to occur, by Muslim soldiers. The colonists start to prepare for an attack but they are soon surrounded and the siege begins. I like how the tension grows in the story to an almost unbearable pitch and the subtle humor, that permeates the first half of the novel slowly begins to crumble. Based on historical events, Farrell does an incredible job with the writing and the story-telling. He was a genuine talent. Too bad he died at a young age. This is the second book in his Empire Trilogy.
Farrell is the funniest novelist in English since Evelyn Waugh, with the same eye for the absurd as Tom Sharpe. This is the fictitious account, hilarious and horrifying by turns, of a besieged British garrison which held out for four months in the summer of 1857, the year of the Great Indian Mutiny, against a horde of native Sepoys. Despite the omens, the young British cavalry officers continue to indulge their taste for galloping into the nearest memsahib's drawing room, jumping over the sofas and then filling their sola topis with champagne instead of water to quench their horses' thirst. It is left to the Governor of Krishnapur, a sensitive, cultured man with a collection of treasures in his residence, to prepare for the siege. By the end of it cholera, starvation and the Sepoys have done for most of the inhabitants, who are reduced to eating beetles and, in the absence of powder and shot, loading their cannons with monogrammed silver cutlery and false teeth. The final retreat of the British, still doggedly stiff-upper-lipped, through the pantries, laundries, music rooms and ballroom of the residency, using chandeliers and violins as weapons, is a comic delight. And so is the usually serious Tim Pigott-Smith, whose repertoire of characters, from petulant maharajas to pink-faced subalterns - "I say, may we come in, we've come to relieve you" - is dazzling. 1974-09-30 Farrell can write with a fury to match his theme. As spectacle, The Siege of Krishnapur has the blaze and the agony of a scenario for hell. But as moral commentary, it is overcalculated—and its ironies unsuitably neat. Indeholdt iIndeholder elevguideHæderspriserNotable Lists
Tør ironisk skildring af den engelske koloni i Krishnapur, en afkrog af Indien, i det dramatiske år 1857, da Sepoy-oprøret i blodig dramatik forstyrrede selskaberne og thedrikningen. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Indlæser... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999LC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit:
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