Ken Follett | Welcome

World Without End ...

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 screwed up my courage, and wrote 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. 'World Without End' 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.
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Published as

The Italian edition, Mondo Senza Fine, is published by Mondadori.
The Dutch edition, Brug naar de Hemel, is published by Van Holkema & Warendor.
The Spanish edition, Un mundo sin fin, is published by RHM.
The Catalan edition, Un món sense fi, is published by Edicions 62.
The German edition, Die Tore Der Welt, is published by Lübbe.
The Hungarian edition, Az idők végezetéig, is published by Gabo.
The Danish edition, Uendelige verden, is published by Cicero.
The Norwegian edition, I all evighet, is publsihed by JW Cappelens.
The Brazilian edition, Mundo sem fin, is publshed by Editora Rocco.
The French edition, Un monde sans fin, is published by Robert Laffont.
The Swedish edition, En värld utan slut, is published by Albert Bonniers Förlag.

Filming of the eight-hour limited series of The Pillars of the Earth on location in Hungary and Austria (pictured) will start on 22 June 2009. Ian McShane, Donald Sutherland, Rufus Sewell, Matthew Macfadyen, Sarah Parish, Hayley Atwell, Eddie Redmayne and Gordon Pinsent headline the star-studded cast for the US$40-million adaptation.
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I've been reading thrillers for longer than I've been writing them. I've put my ideas on how thrillers work and why we love to read them into a lecture – The Art of Suspense.

I delivered The Art of Suspense at the famous 92nd St Y in New York in 2008 (on Halloween!), and it was filmed and published on DVD. If you would like to watch a streaming video version or order a copy on DVD, please see 'The Art of Suspense' page.

On my site you'll also find…

Information on my novels – including audio and text excerpts – movie versions and links to publishers worldwide.

My biography, also avaIlable in PDF format in Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.

Questions you have asked, letters you have written to me over the years, and (whoops!) errors in my novels.

Masterclass: advice and tips on how to plan and write a novel – and how to find a publisher

My talk on the history of the thriller – 'The Art of Suspense'

Information about my archives, held at the Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan, United States

My music, information and artwork for the media, and more…

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