J.G. FARRELL’s Troubles wins the 1970 Lost Booker Prize

J.G. FARRELL won his first Booker Prize for Fiction almost forty years ago for The Siege of Krishnapur. (The Siege of Krishnapur was awarded the Booker Prize in 1973.) Today, the late novelist has heen awarded his second Booker Prize for his fourth novel, Troubles, first published in 1970, exactly forty years ago. (Troubles also won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1971.) Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur and a later novel, The Singapore Grip, form a trilogy exploring the end of the British Empire. With this win, Farrell has joined the ranks of J.M. Coetzee and Peter Carey for winning the Booker Prize twice. (If he had won the prize in 1970 proper, he would have gone on to be the first writer to win the Booker Prize twice.) Farrell drowned in a fishing accident in the sea off Bantry Bay in April 1979. He was a few months shy of 44.