Ken Follett and the Triumph o f Suspense:
A Popular W riter Transcends Genres.
By Carlos Ramet. McFarland & Company Inc., Publishers, 2015.
In his recent book, Ken Follett and the Triumph o f Suspense: A Popular Writer
Transcends Genres, Carlos Ramet celebrates a writer who has succeeded in many genres by
offering a view of how fiction and nonfiction works interact and indeed, need each other in
order to become and remain relevant. A continuation of the work begun in his 1999 publication,
Ken Follett: The Transformation o f a Writer, Ramet covers ground not examined in his
previous work. While the first book discusses how Follett succeeded in and transformed a
popular genre, this book focuses on the way in which Follett’s literary efforts and successes
were shaped by the cultural and political issues that fractured existing national power
structures and by the way in which the publishing industry in his day worked.
Although Ramet does discuss how Follett shaped plot, characters, and theme in order
to focus on the political landscape, which he found so intriguing, in this work Ramet
predominantly focuses the way in which the world outside of Follett’s novels affects the books
Follett has written. Ramet examines the conflicts that arose as a result of Follett’s international
success. He details the way in which the personalities of Follett’s supporters and collaborators
“helped and hindered him” (2) professionally. Ramet also describes the way in which
attachment to both literary and popular, but perhaps less revered, work can encourage a writer
to forge results that become platforms in which any writer can explain and further critical
political and philosophical conversations. Ramet defines Follett as an author living in what
Follett termed “the most dramatic and violent century of the human race” (163) and claims that
Follett used fiction to analyze the way in which the 20th century conflicts reshaped countries
and cultures and personal relationships on an emotionally engaging, but also historically
accurate level. In so doing, according to Ramet’s assessment, Follett transcended genres not
only by moving back and forth between the production of serious and multiple lighter forms of
literature, but also by deftly connecting the philosophical and political dots between the real
world practices of nationalism, patriotism, skepticism (and the resultant militaristic impulses)
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