The Pillars of the Earth
Ken Folletts 1,000 page book The Pillars of the Earth sell around 100,000 copies a year in the US alone. It’s translated to several languages (among one Danish my mother tongue), and it’s simply a fantastic book.
The short description from Ken Folletts homepage reads:
In a time of civil war, famine and religious strife, there rises a magnificent Cathedral in Kingsbridge. Against this backdrop, lives entwine: Tom, the master builder, Aliena, the noblewoman, Philip, the prior of Kingsbridge, Jack, the artist in stone and Ellen, the woman from the forest who casts a curse. At once, this is a sensuous and enduring love story and an epic that shines with the fierce spirit of a passionate age.
One wouldn’t think that this book is pulp fiction at its finest, but just you try reading the first couple of page. You’ll get hooked. And you better make sure that you don’t need sleep, because you will not be able to put the book away.
What makes the middle ages good reading
I think there are several things that fascinate the readers. Among other things, it is brutality, ideology and romanticism.
Brutality is interesting because it gives us an insight to the development we’ve undertaken to reach our given development stage. Brutality is for instance what we find in the start of French philosopher Michel Foucault Discipline and Punish with its painting description of a man being brutally torn in 5 parts by horses pulling in arms and legs while the executioners are cutting in the joints (and bare in mind that’s not fiction, that’s punishment in the dark ages) . This is just sick, but it happened.
But we’re also fascinated by the ideology that we often see interwoven in romantic storytelling, and it’s basically this, and the appalling brutality that make us love this book. It’s good versus bad just like Star Wars 
May the force be with you…
I’ll have to check this book out in the future.
I find the “Crusades” period interesting. The creator of Assassins Creed were suppose to be coming out with books based on the game but turned it down in fear of being sued by religious people that were upset with how the novel was portraying *their* ancestry. They wanted them to change certain names and what not but they didn’t want to change the story so they decided to scrap it altogether. Couldn’t they just have put a disclaimer in the beginning?
I love a good conspiracy set around these times. The people, the clothing, the setting is awesome.
This is a great book!