Book
Fall of Giants
First published 2010
In 1911, the lives of five families begin to intersect across Britain, Germany, Russia and the United States. Welsh miner Billy Williams and his politically active sister Ethel confront the power of the Fitzherbert landowning family; Lady Maud Fitzherbert falls in love with German diplomat Walter von Ulrich; American aide Gus Dewar enters President Woodrow Wilson’s circle; and the Russian brothers Grigori and Lev Peshkov seek different routes out of poverty.
War turns private choices into questions of national loyalty. The characters experience trench warfare, political repression, women’s suffrage, revolution and the uncertain peace that follows the armistice. Follett uses their relationships to connect the collapse of European empires with changes in class, labour, gender and democratic politics.
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