Description

An epic, spellbinding tale of ambition, anarchy, and absolute power set against the sprawling medieval canvas of twelfth-century England, The Pillars of the Earth is Ken Follett’s historical masterpiece.

A Mason with a Dream
It is 1135 and civil war, famine and religious strife abound. With his family on the verge of starvation, mason Tom Builder dreams of the day that he can use his talents to create and build a cathedral like no other.

A Monk with a Burning Mission
Philip is the church prior of Kingsbridge. A resourceful man, he knows that if his town is to survive at all, it must find a way to truly thrive. He decides, then, to build Kingsbridge the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has ever known.

A World of High Ideals and Savage Cruelty
As the prior recruits his mason, so begins a journey of ambition, anarchy and the struggle for absolute power. Facing enemies that would thwart them, they will stop at nothing to fulfil their grand plans of Kingsbridge. Soon build tensions between good and evil, turning church against state, and brother against brother . . .

The Pillars of the Earth is the first in The Kingsbridge Novels series, followed by World Without End and A Column of Fire.

Publisher Review

Enormous and brilliant . . . this mammoth tale seems to touch all human emotion - love and hate, loyalty and treachery, hope and despair. This is truly a novel to get lost in -- Cosmopolitan A historical saga of such breadth and density . . . Follett succeeds brilliantly in combining hugeness and detail to create a novel imbued with the rawness, violence and blind faith of the era -- Sunday Express A highly enjoyable tale . . . this book evokes its period brilliantly * Sunday Times *