The Pillars of the Earth
by Ken Follett
- Series
- Kingsbridge, 5 books
- Genre
- Historical novel
- Age
- adults
About the book
In twelfth-century England, in the fictional town of Kingsbridge, everything turns on the building of a cathedral. Master builders, monks, nobles and the poor become tangled up with one another over many years, while war, famine and power struggles rage around them.
The book is long, and that is part of the point. You follow the characters through an entire lifetime and see how a single building can bring a whole town together and tear it apart.
The Pillars of the Earth isn’t fantasy, but it has the same sense of a vast, living world that so many fantasy readers love. The Danish audiobook runs to more than 39 hours.
The books in the series
- The Pillars of the Earth (1989)
- World Without End (2007)
- A Column of Fire (2017)
- The Evening and the Morning (2020) (prequel)
- The Armor of Light (2023)
The Evening and the Morning came out later, but it takes place first, around the year 1000.
My thoughts
I listened to it, and it’s one of those books you live inside for a while. It isn’t fantasy, but the Middle Ages are described in such detail that they feel just as strange and exciting.