It is sometimes forgotten, but Ken Follett has written books other than historical novels. Certainly his greatest success is The Pillars of the Earth, appeared in 1989. And since 2007 he concluded this series of the Middle Ages and published another historical trilogy, The century.
His most recent novel, For nothing in the world, takes up the Follett from before these two great historical frescoes. It is a hybrid, a thriller doubled with a great politico-strategic reflection with spies, drug traffickers, soldiers, missiles and aircraft carriers. The exoticism offered by the British novelist in his meticulous descriptions of the motivations and actions of the secondary characters is transported from the temporal to the geography.
The result, very polished and searched, is more classic than the historical novels to which it has accustomed us for more than 15 years. This time we think of a mix of Michael Crichton, Tom Clancy and Dan Brown.
In a series of interviews and in the preface, Follett explains that he was struck to learn how European heads of state had unwittingly slipped into war in 1914. He wondered how a series of similar mistakes could occur these days.
The action then revolves around a Republican American president, a high-ranking Chinese spy and three American and French spies in Africa who are on the heels of jihadists drug traffickers and humans. An African widow, mother of a young child, completes the portrait.
Already there, we have a carousel a little less stocked than in the historical novels to which he has accustomed most of his readers. And the details of the characters’ lives are less exotic, perhaps because we are less comfortable these days, or more demanding, with a novelist who embraces a culture other than his own.
Some descriptions border on essentialism, which will be refreshing for some and intolerable for others. The young African widow wants to lower the price of an illegal trip to Europe and tells the migrant smuggler that her brother-in-law expected to pay less. The trafficker balks and tells the young mother that the brother-in-law can organize the trip himself. She replies that being a widow, she owes obedience to this brother-in-law. The trafficker is softened by this docility in the face of local paternalism.
Another surprising aspect of the book is Follett’s pro-Western bias. Perhaps because we imagine that a historical writer shares the “progressive” biases often adopted by historians, we look in vain for any trace of irony or empathy when Western spies call simple hypocritical bandits. the jihadists of the Sahel, when the American president explains that she must retaliate with arms as soon as another nation deliberately kills an American when she can ignore the massacre of tens of thousands of non-Americans, or when the Chinese leaders bring back the “century of humiliation” that China experienced between 1860 and 1947 at the slightest hint of disrespect by a Western nation.
Beijing and Africa
The best part of the book takes place in Beijing. The Chinese hero simultaneously leads a dozen games of chess with American and North Korean contacts, with his movie star wife, with his paranoid high-ranking officer father and with his allies and enemies in the Politburo, who sometimes swap places. . The African intrigue, which, in appearance, is central, turns out to be rather cutesy in the end.
Follett has done extensive research so as not to make a mistake, both ethnographically and militarily, and it appears in the course of descriptions in a dozen countries. But there are still some hiccups: a radio plays the hit of K-pop Gangnam Style (a bit dated) and the Republican President was elected in reaction to her racist predecessor.
In short, an excellent Follett for readers who have followed him assiduously throughout his 25 books with contemporary intrigues and have less liked his two historical series. But a puzzling novel for those who have only read the seven books of The Kingsbridge fresco and The century.
For nothing in the world
Ken follett
Robert Laffont
880 pages