J. G. Farrell

When it was originally published in 1986, this book was the first full-length study of Farrell’s fiction. Ronald Binns provides a comprehensive account of the development of this idiosyncratic Anglo-Irish novelist’s career. Farrell’s Empire trilogy was one of the most ambitious literary projects of the 20th Century and Binns examines in detail its component parts – Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur and The Singapore Grip – showing their structural links and discussing Farrell’s use both of historical materials and of parody, pastiche and symbol in his ironic vision of the end of the empire.

Ronald Binns has taught at the University of Ilorin and the University of Portsmouth and written for the Times Literary Supplement, the Times Higher Education Supplement, Critical Quarterly and many other publications. He is the editor of George Gascoigne: Selected Poems, and the author of Orwell in Southwold: His Life and Writings in a Suffolk Town, Malcolm Lowry, J. G. Farrell, Elizabeth, Shakespeare and the Castle: The Story of the Kenilworth Revels and Gascoigne: The Life of a Tudor Poet.