List Price:$22.00
Our Price: $12.50
You Save: $9.50 (43%)
Prices subject to change.
Availability:Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780451224996
ISBN: 045122499X
Label: NAL Trade
Manufacturer: NAL Trade
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 1024
Publication Date: October 07, 2008
Publisher: NAL Trade
Sales Rank: 62
Studio: NAL Trade
Related Items:
Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Ken Follett has 90 million readers worldwide. The Pillars of the Earth is his bestselling book of all time. Now, eighteen years after the publication of The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett has written the most anticipated sequel of the year-World Without End.
Unabridged edition read by John Lee
Amazon.com Review:
Ken Follett has 90 million readers worldwide. The Pillars of the Earth is his bestselling book of all time. Now, eighteen years after the publication of The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett has written the most-anticipated sequel of the year, World Without End.
In 1989 Ken Follett astonished the literary world with The Pillars of the Earth, a sweeping epic novel set in twelfth-century England centered on the building of a cathedral and many of the hundreds of lives it affected. Critics were overwhelmed--'it will hold you, fascinate you, surround you' (Chicago Tribune)--and readers everywhere hoped for a sequel.
World Without End takes place in the same town of Kingsbridge, two centuries after the townspeople finished building the exquisite Gothic cathedral that was at the heart of The Pillars of the Earth. The cathedral and the priory are again at the center of a web of love and hate, greed and pride, ambition and revenge, but this sequel stands on its own. This time the men and women of an extraordinary cast of characters find themselves at a crossroad of new ideas--about medicine, commerce, architecture, and justice. In a world where proponents of the old ways fiercely battle those with progressive minds, the intrigue and tension quickly reach a boiling point against the devastating backdrop of the greatest natural disaster ever to strike the human race--the Black Death.
Three years in the writing, and nearly eighteen years since its predecessor, World Without End breathes new life into the epic historical novel and once again shows that Ken Follett is a masterful author writing at the top of his craft.
Questions for Ken Follett
 Amazon.com: What a phenomenon The Pillars of the Earth has become. It was a bestseller when it was published in 1989, but it's only gained in popularity since then--it's the kind of book that people are incredibly passionate about. What has it been like to see it grow an audience like that?
Follett: At first I was a little disappointed that Pillars sold not much better than my previous book. Now I think that was because it was a little different and people were not sure how to take it. As the years went by and it became more and more popular, I felt kind of vindicated. And I was very grateful to readers who spread the news by word of mouth.
Amazon.com: Pillars was a departure for you from your very successful modern thrillers, and after writing it you returned to thrillers. Did you think you'd ever come back to the medieval period? What brought you to do so after 18 years?
Follett: The main reason was the way people talk to me about Pillars. Some readers say, 'It’s the best book I’ve ever read.' Others tell me they have read it two or three times. I got to the point where I really had to find out whether I could do that again.
Amazon.com: In World Without End you return to Kingsbridge, the same town as the previous book, but two centuries later. What has changed in two hundred years?
Follett: In the time of Prior Philip, the monastery was a powerful force for good in medieval society, fostering education and technological advance. Two hundred years later it has become a wealthy and conservative institution that tries to hold back change. This leads to some of the major conflicts in the story.
Amazon.com: World Without End features two strong-willed female characters, Caris and Gwenda. What room to maneuver did a medieval English town provide for a woman of ambition?
Follett: Medieval people paid lip-service to the idea that women were inferior, but in practice women could be merchants, craftspeople, abbesses, and queens. There were restrictions, but strong women often found ways around them.
Amazon.com: When you sit down to imagine yourself into the 14th century, what is the greatest leap of imagination you have to make from our time to theirs? Is there something we can learn from that age that has been lost in our own time?
Follett: It’s hard to imagine being so dirty. People bathed very rarely, and they must have smelled pretty bad. And what was kissing like in the time before toothpaste was invented?
Customer Reviews Average Rating: 
Rating:  - WORLD WITHOUT END: Another Great Read!
WORLD WITHOUT END:Another great read by Ken Follett!A little longer than PILLARS OF THE EARTH, but it, too, left me wanting more.Two hundred years after Prior Philip in Kingsbridge, the characters and conflicts Follett has created rival those in the prequel.
Rating:  - Midevil Soap Opera
As good as Pillers of the Earth was that's how bad the World Without End is.
It is a real soap opera. The characters are tortured without end in an unrealestic way. As a student of midevil culture I have a insite into the time. His physical discriptions are good but the application of what many of the characters do is unrealistic being that they are either pure evil or good, no gray areas people are not like that.The book is an exact copy of his first book. The characters are the same ... Read More
Rating: - Exciting, rnjoyable historical fiction story.Well written.
A good follow-up to "Pillars of the Earth".
Very suspenseful story,Really enjoyed this book.
Rating: - Awesome sequel and worth the wait....
I didn't think Ken Follett could follow up The Pillars of the Earth very well, but he proved me wrong.Pillars is still one of the all time greats, but I loved World without End.It had tremendous characters, story lines, people you loved and people you hated....I am a big fan, this one is a winner.....
Rating: - Lives up to the promise of his first medieval novel
I had greatly enjoyed Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth, and so I was looking forward to World Without End. While not exactly a sequel, his second medieval novel picks up in the same town of Kingsbridge two and a half centuries later, so that his first novel is the local history and its characters the ancestors of the characters of his second novel. It completely lived up to my expectations, and held me rapt. Once again he has woven a fascinating tale of love, ambition (both lofty and venial), and ... Read More
World Without End |
