Fall of Giants

This past week was excruciatingly slow so I took advantage of it and caught up on some reading. After finishing Eye of the Needle, I picked up the last Follett book not yet read – Fall of Giants. Over the past year, since its release I unsuccessfully tried reading the book a couple of times. The first time I lugged the 1000 page book half way around the world, the next time it just sat in my drawer. I was not motivated.

This time was different; I started it and raced through it within the week unable to put it down. First book of the century trilogy, Fall of Giants deals with several families and their attempts to survive during World War I. Ken Follett has a remarkable writing style which is further pronounced when he is narrating period pieces. It’s almost as if something in his writing changed and he adapted a new way of writing since Pillars of the Earth. To me all his books before Pillars have a different tone.

He talks of several characters scattered throughout the globe – aristocracy in England, mine workers in Wales, peasants in Russia, wealthy bureaucrats in Germany and nascent politicians in USA. Of course, you know at some point some if not all of the characters will meet each other and develop the story line further.

What struck me most about the story is the disparity between the rich and the poor. Much hasn’t changed since, but reading about the tyranny in Russia at the time of the tsar brought to mind a whole new reality. What history tells us is the tsar and the tsarita along with their children were mercilessly gunned down by revolutionaries. But history is not very kind, for it ignores to describe in detail the hardships that forced the common man to stand up and say “I’ve had enough!” When you are hanged for merely raising your voice against monarchy or gunned down because the tsar wants to dispel the crowd and lose your parent, child, sibling, reality becomes different. And all you were asking for is more bread or less squalid conditions. Is that really a crime? If a government cannot provide that basic need, what good is it? How are citizens supposed to survive when the harsh reality wakes them up at midnight to stand in line for a single loaf of bread that will run out before 5 am? What sort of existence is that?!

Post WWI, the story ends rather quickly but not before describing the harsh reality of what Germany had to endure. Much has been said and read about the reasons for WWI, some more real than others. Now I would not say Germany was not to blame but to think they triggered WWI, entirely on their own, would be extremely naïve. I always thought the terms meted out to them after the war were harsh but to think a loaf of bread cost 127 billion francs! I was not ready for that. Another case of history written only to exalt the winners. Imagine if Germany had won - how would have history been written then?

Then there is the cause of women – not being able to vote, cannot leave the home without an escort, constantly talked down to by their male counterparts – reminds me of the Taliban! You’d think the wars and the subsequent destruction would have taught us a thing or two, which I'm sure they have, but we still have a long way to go. Mankind is still scattered, fragmented, biased on gender, religion, even color of skin. We are all equal and a part of the whole. If only we all thought like John Donne.

'No Man is an Island'

No man is an island entire of itself; every man

is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;

if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe

is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as

well as any manner of thy friends or of thine

own were; any man's death diminishes me,

because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom

the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.