Winner of the Booker prize in 1974, JG Farrell's dark social satire THE SIEGE OF KRISHNAPUR recounts a besieged British garrison in a remote region of India during the "Sepoy uprising" of 1857. Trapped in their gilded prison, cut off from food, water, and supplies, the Victorian English begin to lose their grip on sanity and sense of class privilege as they feed on beetles, and give their horses champagne to drink. Meanwhile, outside the walls of the compound, Indian families lie out on picnic blankets, awaiting the spectacle of imminent massacre. The most acclaimed of Farrell's "Empire Trilogy"--also including TROUBLES (about a English Major in a dilapidated Irish Hotel) and THE SINGAPORE GRIP (about the Japanese invasion of Singapore)--THE SIEGE OF KRISHNAPUR is a powerful tale of the decline of the British Empire as its elitism slides into vanity, illusion, and madness.