In 1979, in a remote corner of West Cork in Ireland, J.G. Farrell was drowned while fishing from the rocks near his home. He was 43, and it had only been six years since he had won the Booker Prize for his novel The Siege of Krishnapur. A man who elevated privacy to a high art, Farrell's leagcy would be the Empire Trilogy, now hailed as a classic of the 20th century, as well as a lingering mystery. After the drowning, newspaper reports at once gave rise to rumours about how and why he died. Farrell had always been a man who baffled even those closest to him. Based on her access to J.G. Farrell's family and friends, as well as his notebooks and personal correspondence, Lavinia Greacen's biography disentangles not only the full circumstances of the novelist's death, but the story of his life and how it informed everything he wrote. Born into a family with contrasting Irish, English and expatriot traditions, Farrell eventually found himself drawn to write about the aftermath of empire in Ireland, India and Singapore. After a conventional education, the outstanding athlete was stricken with polio in his first term at Oxford. The ordeal affected him for life and lent his writing a surreal humour and an instinctive sympathy with people under extreme pressure. Farrell was an enigmatic, elusive character who nevertheless amused and captivated a wide circle of friends in England and America. He never married, but loved many women, whose traces can be found in his fiction.