Fall of Giants

Welsh author Ken Follett opens his Century Trilogy with a historical novel that follows five linked families, Welsh, English, German, Russian and American, through the First World War, the campaign for women's suffrage and the Russian Revolution. The story starts in 1911, when thirteen-year-old Billy Williams goes to work in the coal mine beneath the Welsh town of Aberowen. His sister Ethel keeps house for the aristocratic Fitzherberts; Lady Maud Fitzherbert crosses paths with the German spy Walter von Ulrich; American law student Gus Dewar is ambitious; and the orphaned Russian brothers Grigori and Lev Peshkov plan to emigrate to America.

Tudor Mihailescu, a finance and business enablement manager, included it in his book recommendations as the start of Follett's Century Trilogy, which he described as a blend of history and fiction.