Unfortunately, word spread that the greasing had been accomplished by rendering cow and pig fat. When this army shifted over to the more-modern Enfield rifle, it required a new type of sealed – or greased – cartridge. Whatever it is called, it was an extremely violent affair, marked by sieges, battles, and massacres.Īt the time, large parts of India were ruled by the British East India Company, which had its own army overwhelmingly made up of Indian soldiers. The animating event of The Siege of Krishnapur is the uprising of 1857, known variously as the Indian Mutiny, the Indian Rebellion, and the First War of Independence. It is among the more tonally inconsistent books I’ve read – rapidly veering from seriousness to satire, from the silly to the sublime – and works all the better because of it. This is a deconstruction, a farce, and an inverted comedy of manners, all masquerading as an adventure tale. But instead of a moralizing lecture, he wraps his critique in several layers of entertainment. Set in India, Farrell’s classic – it is the second book in his famed “Empire Trilogy” – takes on incredibly serious themes, specifically colonialism and imperialism.
Sometimes, in fact, it can be the best way, because you find your way to the conclusion without even trying. Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur is a good reminder that humor can be an extremely effective way of delivering a lesson or making a point.
Harry had been on the point of giving the order to fire but he had been plucked from Fleury’s side and was groveling somewhere in the darkness…” Suddenly, a shrapnel shell landed on the corner of the verandah, and all was chaos. Daubs of orange hopped at regular intervals from one end of the rim of darkness to the other. Hardly had Fleury spoken when the rim of darkness beneath the horizon began to sparkle like a firework and immediately the air about them began to sing and howl with flying metal and chips of masonry…then in a wave came the sound. “Now that the sky had lightened one could distinguish silhouettes against it for an instant it had seemed that a strong breeze was blowing through the melon-beds and setting them on the march, but the day’s wind had not yet risen.
0 kommentar(er)
