Fall of Giants
is his magnificent new historical epic. The first novel in The Century
Trilogy, it follows the fates of five interrelated families—American,
German, Russian, English, and Welsh—as they move through the
world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and
the struggle for women's suffrage.
Thirteen-year-old Billy
Williams enters a man's world in the Welsh mining pits...Gus Dewar, an
American law student rejected in love, finds a surprising new career in
Woodrow Wilson's White House...two orphaned Russian brothers, Grigori
and Lev Peshkov, embark on radically different paths half a world apart
when their plan to emigrate to America falls afoul of war, conscription,
and revolution...Billy's sister, Ethel, a housekeeper for the
aristocratic Fitzherberts, takes a fateful step above her station, while
Lady Maud Fitzherbert herself crosses deep into forbidden territory
when she falls in love with Walter von Ulrich, a spy at the German
embassy in London...
These characters and many others find their
lives inextricably entangled as, in a saga of unfolding drama and
intriguing complexity, Fall of Giants moves seamlessly from
Washington to St. Petersburg, from the dirt and danger of a coal mine to
the glittering chandeliers of a palace, from the corridors of power to
the bedrooms of the mighty. As always with Ken Follett, the historical
background is brilliantly researched and rendered, the action
fast-moving, the characters rich in nuance and emotion. It is destined
to be a new classic.
Description:
Fall of Giants is his magnificent new historical epic. The first novel in The Century Trilogy, it follows the fates of five interrelated families—American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh—as they move through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women's suffrage.Thirteen-year-old Billy Williams enters a man's world in the Welsh mining pits...Gus Dewar, an American law student rejected in love, finds a surprising new career in Woodrow Wilson's White House...two orphaned Russian brothers, Grigori and Lev Peshkov, embark on radically different paths half a world apart when their plan to emigrate to America falls afoul of war, conscription, and revolution...Billy's sister, Ethel, a housekeeper for the aristocratic Fitzherberts, takes a fateful step above her station, while Lady Maud Fitzherbert herself crosses deep into forbidden territory when she falls in love with Walter von Ulrich, a spy at the German embassy in London...
These characters and many others find their lives inextricably entangled as, in a saga of unfolding drama and intriguing complexity, Fall of Giants moves seamlessly from Washington to St. Petersburg, from the dirt and danger of a coal mine to the glittering chandeliers of a palace, from the corridors of power to the bedrooms of the mighty. As always with Ken Follett, the historical background is brilliantly researched and rendered, the action fast-moving, the characters rich in nuance and emotion. It is destined to be a new classic.