The beginnings of the industrial revolution, the construction of the first factories with the arrival of the steam engine and the never-ending Napoleonic wars, including Waterloo, are the scene of the novel with which Ken Follett concludes the series that began with The Pillars of the Earth. The armor of light (Rosa dels Vents/Plaza
We are experiencing a profound technological change as in The Armor of Light. Do you see parallels between the two times?
Yes, there are three similarities. First, that we are experiencing a technological revolution. But in addition we are also experiencing a war in Europe, then it was the Napoleonic wars and today the war in Ukraine. And thirdly there is also a cost of living crisis. Food prices skyrocket. In the 18th century, the price of bread doubled, a catastrophe for many families. And today all food prices are rising. I must say that we are not as cruel today as we were then. In my country or in Spain there are food banks where you can get food for nothing. And in my country a lot of people are using them, people you’d think are middle class, but with wages that haven’t grown with inflation and they’re in trouble. They are parallels but not reflections, and perhaps we can fight this crisis better than in the 18th century.
What can we do better?
That there are food banks shows that we do what we can for the losers; in the 18th century they were ignored, they could die of hunger or pneumonia, which was what typically happened to malnourished people. Today there is no need for anyone to die or go hungry, even if there are still malnourished people. we are better But we can do better with the people affected by technological change. Sometimes people do a job for half their lives and suddenly that job is no longer there because a machine does it. They can learn to do other things, but we have to help them learn, that we acquire new skills. And we can do this better than we do now.
In the novel some see the machines as an invention of the devil and provoke a fear that evokes artificial intelligence today. Does it worry you?
It will change our society, but I don’t feel it as a threat. I have ChatGPT and last week I asked him to write a chapter of a novel in the style of Ken Follett. It was very interesting because it was terrible, full of clichés, it made me confident. He can’t write better than me.
How do you see this figure that hovers over the entire novel also with conflicting visions, Napoleon?
A complicated figure. Ridley Scott’s new film apparently says he was like Hitler. No. He was a dictator, certainly not a democrat, but he did some good things. When he conquered Italy, he abolished the Jewish ghettos, was enthusiastic about education for girls and was a great general. He defended his country and lost in the end, but all European countries attacked France together because they wanted to nullify the revolution, they were afraid. And it took them twenty-three years to defeat France. And even the last battle, that of Waterloo, was a short one. And you can’t say he was like Hitler. There were no death camps. It wasn’t that. People who say that Napoleon is like Hitler or that Trump is like Hitler are talking nonsense because they have not created death camps. They may be fascist or very dangerous, but to say they are like Hitler diminishes how terrible he was.
You always say that it fascinates you to explore in your works how people have fought for freedom in history, and even won. Is light armor an example? And do you think that today, with the rise of populism, we are winning or losing this battle?
In The Armor of Light, they fight for freedom of expression because the government, so frightened by the French Revolution, became very repressive and made it a crime to discuss the reform of Parliament, and also for the freedom to form a union, an aspiration that was criminalized by the government of the time and had nothing to do with the war. As for today, it’s a complicated time. Some of the things I took for granted when I was young, like freedom of speech, are under threat. The independence of judges, for example. One of the first things fascists do is try to control the courts and judges. And this is happening now in Poland and Israel, and it has already happened in the United States with many far-right Republican Supreme Court members. And the other thing they need to do is control the press, which they have already done in Hungary. And then, of course, in Turkey people voted to lose their freedom. It is difficult to understand. There are threats to our freedom. We can fight back and we will fight back, but I can’t say we are guaranteed to win.
Bread and peace, as some of his characters ask, is it enough for the people?
They didn’t ask for freedom, did they? They asked for bread and peace. Sometimes in emergencies it is forgotten. And I guess the people who vote for far-right parties must have forgotten about freedom. And they don’t realize that freedom will help them achieve bread and peace.
When you started The Pillars of the Earth, did you imagine that it would continue in the village of Kingsbridge for several more centuries?
I had no plan, and in fact I didn’t write another book about Kingsbridge for seventeen years. But the book’s sequel, An Endless World, was a crowd pleaser. I realized they loved Kingsbridge. And I really like writing about this town. So, the next time I had an idea for a historical novel, I thought, why can’t I set it there? And that’s how it all came about. Looking back now, I never thought of it as a set, I was simply looking for an exciting story. But in retrospect, I can see that these five novels plus the Trilogy of the Century form a corpus and are united by the theme of freedom.
How do you see your country today? Has Brexit been a mistake?
Most of those who voted for Brexit now believe it was a mistake. Actually, there is no discussion on the matter. But how it will be resolved is difficult, because if tomorrow our Government went to the Europeans and told them: ‘We want to unite again’, they will tell us: ‘No, no, no, no, please, please’. Because we’ve been a nuisance, the reason-seekers. We have to fix things. It will take us time to repair our relations with the rest of Europe and we have to show the Europeans that we are no longer crazy. And maybe ten years from now we’ll be able to rejoin the community or maybe we’ll just have business deals that will bring us very close. But something like that will come. Now we are going in this direction.
Among his novels is The Man from Saint Petersburg. Would you dedicate it to Vladimir Putin today?
Yes, my God. Russians are, what’s the word?, self-inflicted. They had the Tsar and they got rid of him, and then they had Lenin and Stalin, and then communism came to an end and now they have Putin. They always seem to end up with a worse dictator than the last. I feel sorry for the Russians. I don’t know how they managed to be so unlucky.
