Ken Follett and the Triumph of Suspense: A Popular Writer Transcends Genres

Ken Follett: The Triumph of a Popular Writer is an investigation of the craft of writing, the negotiation of serious and popular literary concerns, and the artistic development of an author who wrote his first international bestseller, Eye of the Needle, when he was twenty-five years old. Follett has since been one of the most consistent international best-selling authors, with approximately 130 million copies of his books sold worldwide. Through the blending of different genres, his influence on the thriller form has been manifold and includes the pioneering use of strong female characters in espionage stories and the development of a new kind of novel - the historical thriller, as exemplified by a recent work such as Winter of the World (2012). While tracing his artistic development from his earliest attempts at short stories and screenplays through his mature thrillers and entertainment fiction, Ken Follett: The Triumph of a Popular Writer makes significant use of unpublished primary source materials, including Follett’s business and personal correspondence, notes, unpublished early drafts, journal entries and outlines and concludes that Follett’s dramatic shift to writing historical fiction may have resulted in his most enduring legacy.