The story is set in the town of Krishnapur, and tells of a besieged British garrison which holds out for four months against an army of native sepoys.

Among the community are the District Collector, a father of small children, who is an extreme example of Victorian belief in progress, and can often be found daydreaming of the Great Exhibition; the Magistrate, a Chartist in his youth, but who sees his political ideals destroyed by witnessing the siege; Dr. Dunstaple and Dr. McNab, who row over the best way to treat cholera; Fleury, a poetical young man from England who learns to become a soldier; and Lucy, a "fallen woman" who is rescued and eventually runs a tea salon in the despairing community.

By the end of the novel, cholera, starvation and the sepoys have killed off most of the inhabitants, who are reduced to eating dogs, horses and finally beetles, their teeth much loosened by scurvy.

"The final retreat of the British, still doggedly stiff-upper-lipped through the pantries, laundries, music rooms and ballroom of the residency, using chandeliers and violins as weapons, is a comic delight".

[4] On 2 September 1973, Julian Symons wrote in The Sunday Times that Farrell is "one of the half-dozen British writers under forty whose work should be read by anybody inclined to think that no interesting novels are being written today.