Ken Follett

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Ken Follett, ca.2017

Kenneth Martin "Ken" Follett , CBE (born June 5, 1949 in Cardiff , Wales ) is a British writer who writes his works in the style of classic thriller dramaturgy. Follett was best known for his novel The Needle , which has been translated into 30 languages. This work sold around twelve million times, was awarded the Edgar Award and was made into a film with Donald Sutherland in the lead role.

Life

Ken Follett was the first of three children to Veenie and Martin Follett. When he was ten years old, his family moved to London . His father was a tax officer, his mother a housewife. The strictly religious parents did not allow their children to listen to television or radio, and so Follett learned to read at an early age and immersed himself in the stories and tales of his mother. He enjoyed books a lot, and the library became his favorite place. He later finished his school career in London. He then studied philosophy at University College London , as he was initially very interested in religion as a teenager, but soon broke it off. Today he describes himself as an atheist. He hoped to be able to answer the question of the existence of God and his belief in it with the help of philosophy. When his friend Mary became pregnant, the young couple married at the end of Follett's first semester at university. In July 1968 their son Emanuele was born. During the Vietnam War , Follett discovered his passion for politics and in September 1970, right after university, attended a three-month journalism course, which slowly brought him onto the career of writing. For the time being, however, Ken Follett worked as a reporter for the South Wales Echo newspaper in Cardiff . After the birth of his daughter Marie-Claire in 1973, he worked as a columnist for the Evening News in London.

Ken Follett with his novel Eisfieber , the German edition of Whiteout , October 2005.

When Follett realized he was unsuitable as a " investigative journalist ", he began writing short stories and novels in the evenings and weekends. In 1974 he left the newspaper business and took a job at the small London publisher Everest Books. His after-work writing led to the publication of a few books, but none of them sold well. Then in 1978 his novel Die Nadel was published, which made Follett a bestselling author. The success of this book enabled him to give up his previous job, rent a villa in France and devote himself entirely to his next novel Dreifold . Three years later, Follett and his family moved to Surrey , where he was involved in fundraising and the Labor Party election campaign . Here he met Barbara Broer, the then secretary of the local party office, with whom he fell in love and whom he married in 1985 after his divorce. The couple moved into an old parsonage in Hertfordshire , and Follett played bass guitar in the band Damn Right I've Got the Blues. In the following years, Ken Follett wrote other novels and also took on social tasks in various clubs and associations.

Follett is a second marriage to Barbara Follett , a former Labor MP in the British House of Commons and Minister of Culture and Tourism. The couple live in Chelsea ( London ) and Hertfordshire .

Working method and writing style

In terms of circulation and sales, Ken Follett is seen as one of the most internationally successful “writing and epic entrepreneurs” in the literary scene, alongside Stephen King , Dan Brown , John Grisham and Michael Crichton . Thanks to its simple and generally understandable sentence structure, the novels could be translated into many languages, which has contributed significantly to its success.

He works with a staff of twenty that he calls the Follett Office. While Follett is responsible for the creative work of writing, his personal advisors, agents, researchers and historians take care of the administrative tasks that give structure to the book projects. Follett gives eight months for research and planning, eight months for the first draft and a further eight months for revision for his projects. After that, it will be delivered to the publisher on time. In his works, which are told from different perspectives, Follett provides the reader with interpretation models for the present. The aim of his novel trilogy Fall of the Titans , Winter of the World and Children of Freedom is to grasp the whole of world history and to write a kind of global literature. In addition to the greatest possible care and planning in advance, his principles include accurate historical research, whereby he adapts the plot of his story to the historical framework and not vice versa. His writing philosophy includes addressing the broadest possible readership. To keep the reader interested, he builds turning points into his stories at certain intervals. A good novel, according to Follett, must contain fifty dramatic scenes. In addition to the narrative perspective, the story jumps back and forth between different people and storylines, whereby the individual backgrounds of the characters are examined in more detail.

His characters are mostly young, charismatic heroes, whereby Follett has a preference for strong female characters who have to fight against the obstacles of their respective times. It is often criticized that Follett places a strong focus on sex (e.g. in his book Ice Fever ) and explicit depictions of violence. His stylistic trademarks include “knowledgeable solidity and substantial objectivity, each presented in easily understandable language, that is, with a minimum of specialist vocabulary”.

Awards

Follett statue in Vitoria-Gasteiz , Spain

Appointments

  • 0? 0: 0Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts
  • 1994: Fellow of University College, London
  • 1996: Trustee, National Literacy Trust
  • 1998: Governor, Roebuck Primary School & Nursery, Stevenage
  • 1998-2009: President, Dyslexia Action
  • 1998–1999: Chair, National Year of Reading
  • 2000: Patron, Stevenage Home start
  • 2002: Vice-President, Stevenage Community Trust
  • 2003: Chair of the Advisory Committee, Reading Is Fundamental RIF UK
  • 2003: Board Member, National Academy of Writing
  • 2011: Fellow of Yr Academi Gymreig - the Welsh Academy
  • 2018: Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) - "For services to Literature and to charity." - The Queen 's Birthday Honors

Prices

Honorary doctorate

  • 2007: Honorary D. Litt. doctorate from University of Glamorgan, Wales
  • 2007: Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Saginaw Valley State University
  • 2008: Honorary D. Litt. doctorate from the University of Exeter

Audiobook Award

  • 2009: Die Tore der Welt ( Gold ), Germany: Audiobook Award
  • 2015: Die Nadel (Gold), Germany: Audiobook Award

Works

(the original English titles in brackets)

Film adaptations

Radio plays

Games

literature

  • Albert Zuckerman: Best Seller: Ken Follett's agent on the art and craft of writing a bestseller. Lübbe, 2000. ISBN 978-3-404-94008-0 .

Web links

Commons : Ken Follett  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

swell

  1. ↑ a b Jessica Walford, Robert Dalling, Robert Harries, Caitlin O'Sullivan, Oliver Roderick, Christie Bannon & Anna Lewis: The full list of people in Wales recognized in the Queen's Birthday Honors List. The awards are a recognition of a person's contribution to society. Article in the MediaWales web representation walesonline.co.uk of June 8, 2018. Last update June 9, 2018. Accessed July 29, 2019.
  2. ↑ Viva !, issue 6/2014, p. 106.
  3. ↑ Each of us would like to get lost in another world. Interview with Petra Pluwatsch. In: Frankfurter Rundschau of September 12, 2017, pp. 20–21
  4. ↑ Jakob Buhre: Interview with Ken Follett. In: planet-interview.de. Planet Interview GbR, April 9, 2008, accessed October 25, 2010 .
  5. ↑ Jochen Hieber : Ken Follett on the sixtieth: his narrative qualities do not tolerate any doubt. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , features section. June 5, 2009, accessed October 13, 2015 .
  6. ↑ Paul Ingendaay: Ken Follett holds court. Turning point on page six. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, features section. September 11, 2012, accessed October 13, 2015 .
  7. ↑ Jochen Hieber: The new Follett: War, sex and other catastrophes. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, features section. September 18, 2012, accessed October 13, 2015 .
  8. ↑ Gold / platinum database of the Federal Music Industry Association , December 10, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Follett, Ken
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Follett, Kenneth Martin (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer
DATE OF BIRTH June 5, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH Cardiff , Wales