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…