The Siege of Krishnapur

I had read Siege of K many years ago. I think it might have been a set book at school. What I didn't know then was tat it was a black comedy - had I, I might have enjoyed it more.

Readng or rather listening to it as an adult I enjoyed the humour absurd as it was but it highlighted the pathos, dispair and horror of the Indian mutiny.

I enjoyed S of K but the narration did leave a little to be desired. The characters were not being absurd all the time but that's how it came across and unfortunately the female characters were made to sound like the ugly sister in pantomime the whole way thru.

I do recommend the book but only to those that know a bit of the history and want to know what it might have been like at the siege at Cornpore or Lucknow.

The reader brought the book to life with his mastery of different voices and accents. He was able to suggest the characters' moods, changes of outlook, even their weariness and weakness as the siege proceeds. Brilliant work!

One of a trilogy linked by their general theme of the decline of the British Empire, Krishnapur is a wonderfully humane chronicle of a group of Victorian trapped in their cultural assumptions, tested by extreme circumstances. Some grow, some become more hardened in their ways of thinking, some give way. The result is an investigation of basic attitudes toward social organization, human interaction and morality - told with great humor and satire that is never misanthropic. Fascinating.

As a novel, I thought The Siege of Krishnapur was OK, but not as good as I had expected. It echoes works such as A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul or The Plague by Albert Camus, but doesn't quite live up to their standards.

But my main problem was with the narration, and in this respect I find myself in complete disagreement with the Washington Post review cited on the product page. For some reason, Dastor has chosen to narrate all of the characters as caricatures; as far as I could tell, there is nothing in the text itself that dictates this, and even if there were, surely there are subtler ways of conveying irony than this sort of farcical reading. Yes, there are comical characters in the book, but not all of them. Not all the time. The result is that the listener cannot take any of the characters' actions or words seriously, and if the author had any intention of including a selfless act, a tragic moment or an insightful thought in his book, these are lost.

So, to sum up: not a bad book, not a terrible audiobook; it might be to some people's liking, but in my opinion there are much better audiobooks you can listen to.

Parts of this novel were very, very slow. It wasn't the reader - the reading was quite good. I never could decide whether the characters were meant to be taken seriously or if they were meant to be caricatures. Certainly, it does portray a stereotype of the British in India very different from the romantic. Whether it was meant to be a sardonic condemnation of the British Raj or a serious attempt at character analysis in crisis, it failed. Maybe I missed something. I kept wanting to like it, but never quite managed the trick. Indeed, it gave me a craving for Kipling.

No, equally good.

Armageddon by Leon Uris

When the Collector decided the Residency should be fortified and everyone else thought he was paranoid.

The Collector, because of his foresight and calmness in the face of disaster.

The recent tragic events in Libya and failure of a distracted, incompetent government are similar.

Another narrator. This one is terrible at women and exaggerates his men so much that they sound like caricatures.

Not this audiobook. The story sounded like it might be interesting but I just couldn't see listening to another 12 hours to find out.

Simon Vance, Martin Jarvis, Frederick Davidson, etc.

Disappointment.