Today is the birthday of bestselling author, Ken Follett.I am usually not a reader of “thriller” novels, which are the usual genre Follett is working in.
However, I must say that I am a HUGE fan of his book The Pillars of the Earth. There, he wrote a masterpiece of historical fiction that remains as one of the best novels I have ever read.
So I was very excited to stumble across the following news release on Mr. Follett's own website:
Ever since The Pillars of the Earth was published in 1989, readers have been asking me to write a sequel.The book is so popular that I’ve been nervous about trying to repeat its success. But at last I’ve screwed up my courage and begun 'World without End'.
I couldn’t write another book about building a cathedral, because that would be the same book. And I couldn’t write another story about the same characters, because by the end of “Pillars” they are all very old or dead. So I’m working on a story that takes place in the same town, Kingsbridge, and features the descendants of the “Pillars” characters two centuries later.
The cathedral and the priory are again at the centre of a web of love and hate, greed and pride, ambition and revenge. But at the heart of the story is the greatest natural disaster ever to strike the human race: the plague known as the Black Death, which killed something like half the population of Europe in the fourteenth century. The people of the Middle Ages battled this lethal pestilence and survived – and, in doing so, laid the foundations of modern medicine.
I’m hoping to finish the book around May 2007, so that it can be published in time for Christmas that year. Wish me luck!
This is good news for lovers of superb historical fiction. I will definitely be among the first in line at the cash register when this sequel comes out!
For more information on The Pillars, click → here.
To read my own brief review of the book, originally written back in January of 2001, click → here.
Good luck Mr. Follett. And also, Happy 57th Birthday!
Hey, y’all. Have a great Monday!
That's great news! I agree that Pillars is one of the best novels I've read...although a little long in places. If you're in line Cip, pick me up a copy of the new book!
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