The second, a 940-page doorstop of a book called “ Winter of the World” (Dutton, $36) - to be published Sept. The first volume, the bestselling “ Fall of Giants” (2010), encompassed World War I, the Russian Revolution and the struggle for women’s suffrage. Now Follett is amid his most audaciously ambitious project yet: the Century Trilogy, in which five interrelated families - American, Russian, German, English and Welsh - battle through the most dramatic events of the 20th century in a story that will sprawl over nearly 3,000 pages. At 63, the Welsh author is one of the last Mohicans of the form, having traded his highly successful thrillers (“ Eye of the Needle,” “ The Key to Rebecca”) for the multigenerational historical saga in 1989’s “ The Pillars of the Earth” (adapted as a Starz miniseries in 2010) and its sequel, 2007’s “ World Without End,” which premieres as a miniseries on Reelz next month. Who wants to spend so much time, day in and day out, with the same set of protagonists? Who wants to do all that research? Who has the nerve, not to mention the patience, to keep all those narrative balls in the air over hundreds of pages? In recent years, however, the form has fallen somewhat out of favor with writers, if not with readers. Tolstoy largely invented the form in 1869 with “ War and Peace,” and by the middle of the 20th century, its latter-day stalwarts - including James Jones, Herman Wouk and the tireless fiction factory known as James Michener - bestrode the bestseller lists like the titans they were. Shaken by the tyranny and the prospect of war, five interconnected families' lives become ever more enmeshed.Well before blockbuster movies, there were blockbuster novels: big, juicy, page-turning epics, with dozens of characters, exotic settings and multiple plots playing out over several years, often against the backdrop of some extended historical conflict. Many are resolved to oppose Hitler's brutal regime - but are they willing to betray their country?Ī global conflict on a scale never seen before. Eleven-year-old Carla von Ulrich struggles to understand the tensions disrupting her family as Hitler strengthens his grip on Germany. On its own or read in sequence with Fall of Giants and Edge of Eternity, this is a magnificent, spellbinding epic of global conflict and personal drama.ġ933, and at Cambridge, Lloyd Williams is drawn to irresistible socialite Daisy Peshkov, who represents everything that his left-wing family despise, but Daisy is more interested in aristocratic Boy Fitzherbert, a leading light of the British Union of Fascists.īerlin is in turmoil. Winter of the World is the second novel in Ken Follett's uniquely ambitious and deeply satisfying Century trilogy.
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