The third and final book in Ken Follet’s century trilogy, “Edge of Eternity”, was released worldwide on September 16. In the course of these three novels, we see the lives of three generations of five families — one American, one Russian, one German, one English and one Welsh, and all interconnected — unfold in the backdrop of the tumultuous events that categorised the 20th century. In a telephone interview with Weekend Review, Follet shares his thoughts on the trilogy and what it took to write “almost a million words”.
Excerpts:
Was this project a labour of love for you?
Yes, it certainly was. It has taken me seven years and the three books add up to almost a million words. I wanted to write it in seven years and didn’t want to leave longer than that between books. Actually seven years wasn’t really long enough. So I found myself working Saturdays and Sundays to get it done on time. And that’s alright; I don’t really mind that. But the pressure was at the beginning. I wasn’t sure that it would work. I had the idea of a trilogy that would tell the story of the 20th century. But I had not done that before. I looked for books by other authors that were similar and found that there were no books. Nobody else had tried to do this either. So I was doing something that hadn’t been done before and I wasn’t 100 per cent sure that it could be done. For the first year or so, I was constantly thinking whether this is any good or maybe I had to abandon this project and make an announcement to readers and publishers and say it didn’t work and I am going to do something else and I would have to give the money back to the publishers! (laughs) But happily that didn’t happen. Once I had finished the first draft of “The Fall of Giants” [the first novel in the trilogy] and some people had read it and enjoyed it, at that point I thought ‘Ok, I can do this. This is possible’. I then began to relax. And then, having done it once in “The Fall of Giants”, I felt confident that I could be do it in “The World Without End” [the second novel in the series] and “Edge of Eternity”. I felt confident that I could write a book that people would enjoy.
And since the background was the history of the 20th century, there was no dearth of material.
Yes, there was no problem about the history. It’s a very dramatic period of history, with a series of crises and three major wars — the two world wars and the Cold War. The challenge was to take a group of characters and show them living through that history, and taking part in and creating that history in a way that was natural. Of course, by the end of the process, the history is the background and the foreground is the lives and the destinies of these individual characters. So that was the challenge — to start with the history and end up with novels about interesting and engaging people.
When you started off with the first novel, did you chart the course for the characters all the way through to the third novel?
I planned the whole trilogy roughly. For the first six months, I worked on an outline for the whole trilogy. But it wasn’t a detailed outline; just a broad one. But at that stage, I had to make sure that I had a story outline that would take my five original families from the first book all the way through to the end of the 20th century. I had to be confident that I could do that. I didn’t need to explore the details of their stories at that point. For instance, I had to be sure that Jackie would have a child in the first book and in the third book he [the child, George] would be working in the White House. That was very important.
Do the views of your characters reflect your own? For instance, Tania, the Russian journalist, says in “Edge of Eternity”, “There are no good governments.” Is that what you think too — that the Soviet Union was as bad as the United States?
Certainly not. There are many characters in the “Edge of Eternity” who are critical of the American government, over things such as the Vietnam War, Watergate, civil rights and so on. But even the harshest critic of the American government has to admit that the Soviet government was worse. I hope that is very clear in the “Edge of Eternity”. In fact, if I had a fear, it was perhaps that I had been too harsh in my treatment of the Soviet government. Looking back, I did wonder whether I had overlooked the achievements of the Soviet government. But the bottom line is that it was a tyranny; it was an oppressive government and people were not free. The US government has done many wrong things but it is a democratic government and the American people are free. The Soviets did many wrong things and their people were not free. What I hope is that when you read these books, you feel free to make up your own mind. For example, a proud, patriotic American reader may read the “Edge of Eternity” and characters who criticised the American government and think, ‘Well maybe that person is right, or maybe not’.
The idea of giving a rational explanation for the other side of the story is a strong theme throughout the three books. For instance, in the “Winter of the World”, you tried to explain the actions of the Japanese government. And you also seem to criticise Britain for the bombing campaign against Dresden. I think this added credence to the novels.
I am glad you thought that as that is what I was hoping for.
In writing this trilogy, was it your intention to educate the reader? Was the trilogy also meant to be a history lesson of sorts?
Primarily I want people to enjoy the books. But I do think that people like the feeling that they are learning something as well as enjoying the story. I don’t really have a mission to educate but I think a certain amount of education is appealing to people. When they put the book down, they enjoy being able to say that that was a great story and I learnt something I didn’t know.
So can it be said that to appreciate your novels, the reader has to have a certain degree of awareness about the world around us?
I hope not. My intention in writing is that people of all ages and of all education levels can enjoy them. I never want my books to be difficult for anybody to read. Let’s take an older person who never went to university, perhaps left school at 16, I would hope that person would easily understand the novels. It’s not meant to be a challenge in that way. If as readers many people feel they don’t really know about their history, that’s OK. You will find out from my book. I hope there is never a situation when somebody says, ‘I don’t really understand that because I don’t know enough about it.’ Quite the opposite; the person who does not know enough about his history will particularly enjoy the books because he will find out in a way that is very different from reading a history book.
As I was reading the “Edge of Eternity”, in which the you covered the Kennedys, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, etc I was anticipating the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. But you left that subject out completely. I found it curious, given the importance of that event in the history of the 20th century, and also given the fact that you are quite knowledgeable about the subject. You have that as the background for your 1985 novel “Lie Down With Lions”.
Good question; you are quite right, it was an important event in the Cold War. It was a moment of defeat for the Soviets. But I guess I couldn’t see the way to involve my characters in the drama of Afghanistan. It would be quite difficult to send some characters. I suppose I could have had a CIA person there ... it’s difficult to say. I suppose the answer to your question is that you can’t do everything. The book was long enough already and some things just have to be left out. I would have quite liked to include it. It was the last time I think the Soviet Union intervened in a military way in a foreign country. It was very significant in that way.
Betrayal and infidelity are constant themes in the “Edge of Eternity”. Almost every character seems to be unfaithful. Would you say that is reflective of society in general.
I don’t know if it reflects society; perhaps it just reflects literature. The French have a saying: “Without adultery, there is no novel”. It is great of course when two people are young, they fall in love, you have a romance and then they get married. But in a long story like this, you also have to deal with romantic situations between people who have been married a long time and are used to one another. And one of the things that happens in marriages is that people are at least tempted to be unfaithful. I think infidelity is a kind of inevitable theme when you are writing about married people. And, as in life, some people will yield to the temptation and some will not.
You do portray the black market and criminal activity in the Soviet Union. One would have thought in a tightly controlled totalitarian state like that, things such as these would not exist.
The interesting thing is that there always was organised crime in the Soviet Union. We were taught to think of the Soviet Union as a kind of a monolith, that the Kremlin was all powerful and they could do anything. But the reality was that there were conflicts within the Kremlin, with people trying to put one another down. And there were different factions; conservatives and reformers who were in conflict and underneath all this the Communist Party did not have as tight a hold on people as it wanted. And the way this is shown is the black market, and other forms of criminal activity whereby people managed to frustrate the power of the Communist Party.
