If you want to say whose novel is addictive, Ken Follett is definitely one of them, whether it is Uncle Ken’s “Century Trilogy”, or “Temple Spring and Autumn” and “Endless World”, there is a charm that you can’t stop reading it!
What Uncle Ken is best at is combining real history with fictional characters, tightly grasping historical authenticity while giving full play to creativity, completely “dancing in shackles”.
This point is very similar to the familiar Jin Yong, both of which place the protagonist in a real history, which is difficult to distinguish.
Today, you Shujun wants to talk to you about the first part of the century trilogy “The Fall of the Giant”.
The story takes place around the time of World War I, from 1911 to 1924, a time of despair and hope.
IJssel is the housekeeper of the Earl Fitz family, smart and clever, and her brother Billy is a miner.
Count Fitz was handsome and golden, and in the face of the beautiful IJssel, he unceremoniously put her to sleep, but he was afraid of his irascible wife, the Russian princess Bi.
So, even though she was pregnant, IJssel left Fitz and embarked on the road to independence and freedom.
In addition to Ethel’s emotional experience of meeting people, among the several singing and crying love stories in the book, the most memorable is probably the story between Fitz’s sister Jade and the German aristocrat Walter, who love each other but are troubled because of the antagonism between countries.
Before the outbreak of World War I, the two ran around for peace, and the hidden worries of war made their love even more precious, but on the day they got married in private, war broke out…
After the war officially began, various protagonists who appeared in the book, such as Gregory, Billy, Fitz, Walter and other protagonists participated in the battle.
However, one thing can be assured, in the case of the collective blessing of Uncle Ken’s protagonist’s aura, none of them will die, after all, Uncle Ken still has to write the second part.
But through Gregory, who lived at the bottom of Russia, we seem to see the miserable life of ordinary Russians during the war.
For example, for a piece of bread that may not be available, a woman will be willing to sell her flesh. In order to forcibly suppress the workers’ strike, the tsar would have the police open fire on innocent people.
Eventually, in the midst of the chaos, Gregory killed the policemen, the working class entered the revolutionary arena, and Gregory became a Bolshevik.
The war was not only in Russia, the whole of Europe was in chaos, and Billy, another protagonist as a miner, could not bear the oppression, wrote to denounce the major for his arbitrary military operations, and also embarked on the road of rebellion against the rule of the aristocratic class.
At the same time, this war does not only affect men, the lack of labor force women to enter society and start working, here are the two lovely female characters in the book:
That is, we just mentioned Mo Dai and Iethel, they originally had different class backgrounds, but because they also took the fight for women’s rights as their own responsibility, they came together to fight together.
There is a scene in the book that Shujun deeply impresses, that is, at the end of the novel, Ethel, who has become a councilor, and Count Fitz meet unexpectedly.
At this time, Fitz faced Ethel, no longer had the sense of superiority he used to have, and he silently gave way to Ethel.
In this novel of about 600,000 words, a total of 125 characters appear, and there are 22 real historical figures, and the story is advanced in strict order of historical development.
The Sarajevo incident, the First World War, the October Revolution, the Treaty of Versailles, and so on, abstract terms in history textbooks, are brilliantly interpreted before our eyes. Such a combination of fiction and reality allows readers to be in it.
Youshujun always remembers a scene in the book:
At the Finnish station in Petrograd at midnight, the light of a train in the distance, the waiting crowd stirred, the train pewed black smoke into the station, and a short and sturdy man got out of the train, wearing a double-breasted wool coat and a top hat, it was Lenin, and Gregory listened to him excitedly.
Reading such words, it was as if Lenin was walking towards me, the dialogue between the unreal and the real, and the feeling of breaking the dimensional wall was heart-shaking.
Some people may ask, who is this giant in “The Fall of the Giants”? In the view of Youshujun, the giant probably refers to the old feudal political system, or simply and crudely understood it as the old state.
There are falls, there must be rises, and the story begins in 1911 with the coronation of King George V, and ends in 1924, when the leader of the British Labour Party became prime minister for the first time in history.
The seemingly solid dynasty is actually so vulnerable, and such a head-to-end arrangement is indeed painstaking.
Finally, let you end with a sentence from the book: We can change the world, it is not easy, but in the end it will get what we want!
