The writing career of J. G. Farrell was cut short by his unexpected death by drowning when he was fishing on some rocks close to his new home in Kilcrohane, County Cork, Ireland. The obituaries and memoirs published by friends and critics recognized the loss of a major literary figure. Farrell, whom his biographer, Lavinia Greacen, labeled "that most elusive of twentieth century novelists," has remained popular with the reading public, as is demonstrated by the many reprints of his Empire trilogy--according to Ronald Binns in J. G. Farrell (1986) "probably the most ambitious literary project conceived and executed by any British novelist in the 1970s." In academic circles Farrell did not make a major impact until the mid 1990s. His work has mostly been read as political; depending on the critic, he has been credited with reactionary conservative, radical Marxist, or liberal humanist views. These wildly opposite interpretations...