World Without End - Ken Follett - Audio Book Unabridged CD
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45.5 hours 36 CDs
The novel begins in the fictional city of Kingsbridge, England in the year 1327. Four children — Caris, Gwenda, Merthin, and Ralph — go into the woods on All Hallows Day. Gwenda brings her three-legged dog, Hop, whom Ralph shoots with Merthin's home-made bow, foreshadowing Ralph's later cruel behaviour. The children witness two men killed in the forest by Sir Thomas Langley, aided by Ralph. The children then flee, with the exception of Merthin. Sir Thomas asks him to help bury a letter, and then flees to Kingsbridge and seeks refuge in the monastery where he joins the Order of Saint Benedict, becoming a monk. Ten years later Caris and Merthin are in love. Gwenda is sold for a cow by her father to a chapman who intends to prostitute her at a woodsmen's camp. She kills one of the men while he is raping her, and escapes. She is followed but she is able to drown her buyer when a bridge collapses, a tragedy that kills many, including Anthony, the Prior of Kingsbridge monastery. The monastery's Sacrist, Godwyn, who was also the nephew of Anthony, eventually outwits the possible candidates and wins the Prior's position in an overwhelming victory. Godwyn claims to be a reformer, but turns out to be as conservative as his uncle was.
Godwyn quickly begins to clash with the town on a number of issues, including funding and building a new bridge and allowing the townspeople to full wool for a growing fabric industry. Caris, who becomes the de facto Alderman for her father, is a particular problem. Despite her being his cousin, Godwyn charges Caris with witchcraft hoping to have her executed to get her out of the way. To escape execution Caris agrees to join the Kingsbridge nunnery, eventually becomes Prioress, forcing her out of any position to marry Merthin, who leaves Kingsbridge for Florence to pursue his building career. Several years later Florence is ravaged by the plague, or "la moria grande". After recovering from the plague, a newly widowed Merthin returns to Kingsbridge with his daughter Laura (Lolla). There he finds Caris unwilling to renounce her vows, and the two go through a sporadic liaison.
Meanwhile, upon returning from the French Wars, Ralph is given a minor Lordship as a reward for saving the Prince of Wales. As part of this award he was married to the fifteen-year-old Tilly, who bears him a child. He murders her to free himself from the marriage, as he never loved her. With the death of the Earl from the plague and the elimination of Tilly, Ralph is appointed the Earl of Shiring, finally realising his dream of both becoming an earl and marrying the widowed countess Philippa, whom he had longer deisred. However Philippa spurns him, and eventually leaves for the Kingsbridge nunnery, where she has a relationship with Merthin and conceives his child. Afraid of Ralph's wrath at finding out she is pregnant with Merthin's child, Philippa seduces Ralph to make him believe the child is his. As a result Merthin and Phillipa cannot continue their liaison.
Gwenda, the girl from the forest, has meanwhile overcome much adversity to marry Wulfric, a handsome village boy. His lands are denied to him after his family dies on the bridge and his beautiful wife-to-be, Annet, leaves him. Gwenda tries to win Wulfric back his lands by having sex with Ralph, who refuses to acquiese as he bears a grudge against Wulfric. Her first son, Sam, is conceived through this liaison. Eventually, after much hardship, the people of Kingsbridge are granted a charter, freeing them from the lordship of the monastery. Godwyn dies of plague, and Gwenda's brother Philemon becomes his successor, but enjoying little power before leaving. Caris renounces her vows, after finally being able to run her own hospital, and marries Merthin. Wulfric regains his father's land. Davey, Gwenda and Wulfric's child, marries Amabel, the daughter of Annet. Merthin succeeds in building a spire which makes Kingsbridge cathedralthe tallest building in England. Sam and Gwenda kill Ralph. The major characters are Caris, ambitious daughter of the city Alderman; Ralph, son of a disgraced knight; Merthin, Ralph's clever older brother; and Gwenda, starving daughter of a poor landless labourer. The four spend their entire lives trying to understand and protect the secret they share from that fateful encounter in the forest. The story revolves around the cathedral of Kingsbridge and its priory. In the time of "The Pillars of the Earth" the monastery had been a pious institution that encouraged learning and innovation; in the 14th century the monks have become conservative and discouraged modernisation.
About the Author Ken Follett
Ken Follett is widely perceived as a talented author of historical/thriller fiction, with a long series of international best-sellers to his name. Leaving aside a series of competent but undistinguished paperback originals written under various pseudonyms, of which The Modigliani Scandal and Paper Money are perhaps the best known, Follett's literary career has gone through four distinct phases. The first, and most distinguished, phase comprises Eye of the Needle and the five books (four fiction and one non-fiction) that followed it. All are variations of the classic espionage thriller, pitting one or two daring, resourceful agents against a numerous and well-equipped enemy. The settings are both geographically and chronologically diverse, ranging from World War I Europe in The Man from St. Petersburg to (then) present-day Israel, Iran and Afghanistan in Triple, On Wings of Eagles and Lie Down with Lions. Like the early works of Frederick Forsyth, another journalist-turned-novelist, Follett's early thrillers devote much attention to how things are done. The Key To Rebecca, for example, hinges on the workings of a particular type of secret code, the hero of Triple is a master of disguise, and clandestine radio transmitters play a major role in Eye of the Needle. All six books—including On Wings of Eagles, the non-fictional story of the successful attempt to rescue two American employees of Ross Perot's company EDS from Iran after the 1979 Revolution—follow the basic conventions of the thriller genre. All six, however, use those conventions in unconventional ways: making the protagonist of Eye of the Needle a German agent, for example.
The second phase of Ken Follett's career was a conscious departure from the first: a series of four historical novels written in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Pillars of the Earth, the first of the four, set the pattern for the three that followed. Unlike Follett's earlier thrillers, it featured a large cast, multiple plotlines, occasional outbursts of violence, and extensive use of historical background. Pillars, set mostly in medieval England, followed the building of a cathedral. Night Over Water was a Grand Hotel-style tale that took place aboard a transatlantic seaplane flying from Southampton to New York on the eve of World War II. A Dangerous Fortune revolved around family and business intrigue in a large family of financiers in Victorian-era London, and A Place Called Freedom took place in Britain's North American colonies around the time of the American Revolution. Follett changed literary gears a third time in the late 1990s, with a pair of books set firmly in the present and using high technology as a plot device. The Hammer of Eden focused on the potential use of earthquakes as a terrorist weapon, and The Third Twin on the darker aspects of biotechnology. The two novels—seemingly an attempt to mine the same fictional vein as Michael Crichton—were comparatively unsuccessful. Reviewers, as well as many readers, found the characters shallow and the effort required to suspend disbelief too great.
Follett returned to conventional low-tech thrillers in Code to Zero, an espionage story pitting Soviet and American agents on the eve of America's first satellite launch. The World War II adventures Jackdaws and Hornet Flight put Follett firmly back where he began: writing about daring agents operating undercover behind enemy lines, charged with a mission that could change the course of the war. Some critics and readers hailed them as a welcome and long-overdue return by Follett to the kind of story he writes best. Others regarded them as old wine in new bottles: rehashings of themes and situations he had treated more interestingly in his earlier work.
Barring another radical shift in his literary output, Follett's reputation is likely to rest on his early thrillers (especially Eye of the Needle and The Key to Rebecca) and on The Pillars of the Earth, which he himself is said to regard as his finest work. His most recent novel is World Without End, a sequel to The Pillars of the Earth, released in October 2007. He was inspired to write this novel in the cathedral of the Spanish town of Vitoria-Gasteiz, which is why Vitoria has honored him with a sculpture in his likeness.
He received an Honorary LLD (Doctor of Laws) from Exeter University on 11 July 2008. |
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