肯·福萊特 Ken Follett (1949 -)，現象級暢銷小說大師。1978年齣版瞭處女作《風暴島》，並於次年獲得愛倫坡奬，聲名鵲起，專職寫作。2010年，榮登全球作傢富豪榜上第5名。2013年，獲得愛倫坡終身大師奬。他的小說齣版前，都會請曆史學傢審讀書稿，絕不容許齣現任何史實錯誤。有齣版人曾指齣，肯·福萊特 “沒有一個飽受摺磨的靈魂”，他愉快地承認瞭，“大傢都在寫內心的痛苦，可我總是覺得很開心”。他說：“很多作傢隻寫能取悅他們自己的東西，並模模糊糊地希望這也能取悅彆人。但我每寫一頁都在清醒地思考：讀者會怎麼想？讀者覺得這真的會發生嗎？讀者關心這些嗎？讀者想要知道接下來會發生什麼嗎？我敬佩那些用文字和新奇結構進行文學實驗的作傢，但我從不這麼玩。”

作者官方網站：www.ken-follett.com

Follett takes you to a time long past with brio and razor-sharp storytelling. An epic tale in which you will lose yourself."

-The Denver Post on World Without End

Ken Follett's World Without End was a global phenomenon, a work of grand historical sweep, beloved by millions of readers and acclaimed by critics as "well-researched, beautifully detailed [with] a terrifically compelling plot" ( The Washington Post ) and "wonderful history wrapped around a gripping story" ( St. Louis Post- Dispatch )

Fall of Giants is his magnificent new historical epic. The first novel in The Century Trilogy, it follows the fates of five interrelated families-American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh-as they move through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women's suffrage.

Thirteen-year-old Billy Williams enters a man's world in the Welsh mining pits...Gus Dewar, an American law student rejected in love, finds a surprising new career in Woodrow Wilson's White House...two orphaned Russian brothers, Grigori and Lev Peshkov, embark on radically different paths half a world apart when their plan to emigrate to America falls afoul of war, conscription, and revolution...Billy's sister, Ethel, a housekeeper for the aristocratic Fitzherberts, takes a fateful step above her station, while Lady Maud Fitzherbert herself crosses deep into forbidden territory when she falls in love with Walter von Ulrich, a spy at the German embassy in London...

These characters and many others find their lives inextricably entangled as, in a saga of unfolding drama and intriguing complexity, Fall of Giants moves seamlessly from Washington to St. Petersburg, from the dirt and danger of a coal mine to the glittering chandeliers of a palace, from the corridors of power to the bedrooms of the mighty. As always with Ken Follett, the historical background is brilliantly researched and rendered, the action fast-moving, the characters rich in nuance and emotion. It is destined to be a new classic.

In future volumes of The Century Trilogy, subsequent generations of the same families will travel through the great events of the rest of the twentieth century, changing themselves-and the century itself. With passion and the hand of a master, Follett brings us into a world we thought we knew, but now will never seem the same again.