Troubles wins Lost Man Booker Prize
J.G. Farrell tops poll to find best novel of 1970

www.themanbookerprize.com

Forty years after it was first published, Troubles, by J.G. Farrell, is today (Wednesday 19 May), announced as the winner of the Lost Man Booker Prize - a one-off prize to honour the books published in 1970, but not considered for the prize when its rules were changed.

It won by a clear majority, winning 38% of the votes by the international reading public, more than double the votes cast for any other book on the shortlist.

Troubles is the first in Farrell’s Empire Trilogy, which was followed by The Siege of Krishnapur (1973) and The Singapore Grip (1978).  The Siege of Krishnapur won the Booker Prize in 1973 and was shortlisted for the Best of the Booker, a special award created to mark the 40th anniversary of the prize in 2008.
J.G. Farrell died in 1979.

Set in Ireland in 1919, just after the First World War, Troubles tells the tragic-comic story of Major Brendan Archer who has gone to visit Angela, a woman he believes may be his fiancée. Her home, from which he is unable to detach himself, is the dilapidated Majestic, a once grand Irish hotel, and all around is the gathering storm of the Irish War of Independence.

The Guardian wrote, “The evidence of change and decay at the Majestic is no parochial phenomenon and it is this feeling of the particular reflecting the universal, a feeling so successfully pervading page after page of this clever book that makes it a tour de force.”

The winning book was voted for via the Man Booker Prize website, chosen from a shortlist of six selected by a panel of three judges, all of whom were born in or around 1970. They are journalist and critic, Rachel Cooke, ITN newsreader, Katie Derham and poet and novelist, Tobias Hill. The shortlist included The Birds on the Trees by Nina Bawden (Virago); The Bay of Noon by Shirley Hazzard (Virago); Fire From Heaven by Mary Renault (Arrow); The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark (Penguin); The Vivisector by Patrick White (Vintage).

Ion Trewin, Literary Director of the Man Booker Prizes comments, ‘Troubles is a novel of such lasting quality that it has never been out of print in the 40 years since it was first published.  Had this been the winning novel in 1970, JG Farrell would have gone on to become the first author to win the Booker Prize twice.”
The Lost Man Booker Prize was the brainchild of Peter Straus, honorary archivist to the Booker Prize Foundation.  It was created to honour the books of 1970 which missed out on the chance to win the prize when it ceased to be awarded retrospectively and became - as it is today - a prize for the best novel of the year of publication.
The winner was announced by Lady Antonia Fraser, who was a judge for the Booker Prize in both 1970 and 1971, at a celebratory party at 33 Fitzroy Square, in London. The prize, a designer-bound first edition copy of the book, was accepted by J.G. Farrell’s brother, Richard Farrell, on the author’s behalf.

Troubles by J.G. Farrell
Published by Phoenix

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 January 1935. In 1956 he went to study at Brasenose College, Oxford; while there he contracted polio. He drew heavily on his experience for his second novel, The Lung (1965). He spent a good deal of his life abroad, including periods in France, America and the Far East. His novel, Troubles (1970), the first in the Empire Trilogy, won the Faber Memorial Prize in 1971 and was made in to a film for television in 1988. The second in the trilogy, 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.