BOOK REVIEW FALL OF GIANTS BY KEN FOLLET

The first of a new trilogy by the writer of The Pillars of the Earth, tells several parallel stories taking place in the middle of the social and political circumstances that happen around the World War I. In this book the life of five families portrays the history of the western world between 1910 and 1924, with their most important events, the World War I, the Russian revolution, the prohibition on selling liquor and the fight for women´s voting rights.

The main argument turns around the story of two english families, the wealthy family of earl Fitzherbert and miners humble family of Ethel Williams. Ethel, an intelligent young woman who has become in the housekeeper of the earl, is pregnant by him. Despised by the earl, she must travel to London where she is involved with movements for women´s right to vote. Her political career progresses until reach a seat in the House of Commons where she again meets the earl, member of The House of Lords. 

The lives of the German military and diplomatic Walter von Ulrich, the russian brothers Peshkov and U.S. citizen Guys Dewar, set in the political and military struggles of the World War I, the russian revolution and the prohibition of alcohol, respectively, bind each other and with the lives of the english families on a detailed and intense narrative able to maintain the reader's attention for more than a thousand of pages of the book and invites to continue reading the complete trilogy.

Carlos Andrés Agudelo.