He gained prominence for a series of novels known as "the Empire Trilogy" (Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur and The Singapore Grip), which deal with the political and human consequences of British colonial rule.

His father, William Farrell, had worked as an accountant in Bengal and, in 1929, he married Prudence Josephine Russell, a former receptionist and secretary to a doctor.

The two argue about existentialism: the position that murder can be vindicated as an expedient in overthrowing tyranny (Sartre) versus the stance that there are no ends that justify unjust means (Camus).

Bernard Bergonzi reviewed it in the New Statesman's 20 September 1963 issue, writing: "Many first novels are excessively autobiographical, but A Man from Elsewhere suffers from the opposite fault of being a cerebral construct, dreamed up out of literature and the contemporary French cinema."

Simon Raven wrote in The Observer on 15 September 1963: "Mr. Farrell's style is spare, his plotting lucid and well timed; his expositions of moral or political problems are pungent if occasionally didactic.

[citation needed] Two years after this came The Lung, in which Farrell returned to his real-life trauma of less than a decade earlier: the main character Martin Sands contracts polio and has to spend a long period in hospital.

Boris also has sex with an underage teenager, June Furlough, and fantasises about Ines, a Swedish summer guest, the titular "girl in the head".

In the 13 July 1967 issue of The Listener, Ian Hamilton wrote that he disliked the novel, and thought it was, at best, an "adroit pastiche" of Samuel Beckett's deadbeats.

[2] Martin Levin in The New York Times Book Review on 23 March 1969 praised Farrell's "flair for giving the ridiculous an inspired originality".

"[2] Troubles tells the comic yet melancholy tale of an Englishman, Major Brendan Archer, who in 1919 goes to County Wexford in Ireland to reunite with his fiancée, Angela Spencer.

[2] Farrell's next book, The Siege of Krishnapur, and his last completed work, The Singapore Grip, both continue his story of the collapse of British colonial power.

Inspired by historical events such as the sieges of Cawnpore and Lucknow, the novel is set in the fictional town of Krishnapur, where a besieged British garrison succeeds in holding out for four months against an army of native sepoys in the face of enormous suffering before being relieved.

"British Novelists and Indian Nationalism: Contrasting Approaches in the Works of Mary Margaret Kaye, James Gordon Farrell and Zadie Smith", Bethesda: Academica Press, 2010.