Is this book part of a larger series?

This novel is the first installment of the Century Trilogy, which follows the descendants of these five families through the major political and social upheavals of the twentieth century.

How does the author handle real historical figures alongside fictional characters?

The narrative integrates real political figures by placing them only in locations and situations where they were historically present or could have plausibly been, often using documented memos or speeches to inform their dialogue.

Fall of Giants

Historical Fiction Literary Fiction

Pages: 1040
Published: 2010
Language: English

Synopsis

Fall of Giants, first in Ken Follett's Century Trilogy, opens in 1911 as thirteen-year-old Billy Williams goes down the coal mine beneath the Welsh town of Aberowen.

His sister Ethel keeps house for Earl Fitzherbert, the aristocrat who owns the land above the seam, and the Earl's sister Lady Maud is drawn to Walter von Ulrich, a German nobleman at the embassy in London.

In Russia, the orphaned brothers Grigori and Lev Peshkov work in a St Petersburg locomotive factory, while in Washington the young Gus Dewar becomes an adviser to President Woodrow Wilson.

As the families' paths cross, the novel follows them through the outbreak of the First World War, the trenches of the Western Front, the collapse of the Russian Empire and the 1917 revolution, the campaign for women's suffrage and the hardship of postwar Germany. Real figures such as King George V and Wilson appear beside the invented cast. It is a long, panoramic historical saga, and its characters' children carry the story into the next two books.