Troubles. This item is unavailable.Troubles

Winner of the 1970 lost Man Booker prize

'A work of genius' GUARDIAN

'One of the finest novels of the past 50 years' MAIL ON SUNDAY

'Funny, sad and beautifully written; prescient, wise, original and unexpectedly eccentric' OBSERVER

'No finer work has ever been written about this transitional period in Irish history: it remains a landmark in 20th-century Irish literature' IRISH INDEPENDENT

Major Brendan Archer travels to Ireland - to the Majestic Hotel and to the fiancée he acquired on a rash afternoon's leave three years ago. Despite her many letters, the lady herself proves elusive, and the Major's engagement is short-lived. But he is unable to detach himself from the alluring discomforts of the crumbling hotel. Ensconced in the dim and shabby splendour of the Palm Court, surrounded by gently decaying old ladies and proliferating cats, the Major passes the summer. So hypnotic are the faded charms of the Majestic, the Major is almost unaware of the gathering storm. But this is Ireland in 1919 - and the struggle for independence is about to explode with brutal force.

J.G. Farrell was born in Liverpool in 1935 and spent a good deal of his life abroad, including periods in France and North America, and then settled in London where he wrote most of his novels.

Among his novels, TROUBLES won the Faber Memorial Prize in 1970 and the Lost Man Booker prize in 2010 and THE SIEGE OF KRISHNAPUR won the Booker Prize in 1973.

In April 1979 he went to live in County Cork where only four months later he was drowned in a fishing accident.