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Night Over Water

ken follett

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September 1939. England is at war with Nazi Germany. In Southampton, the world’s most luxurious airliner—the legendary Pan Am clipper—takes off for its final flight to neutral America. Aboard are the cream of society and the dregs of humanity, all fleeing the war for reasons of their own…shadowed by a danger they do not know exists…and heading straight into a storm of violence, intrigue, and betrayal…

448 pages, Paperback

First published September 28,1991

This edition

Format
448 pages, Paperback
Published
April 6, 2004 by Penguin Books
ISBN
9780451211477
ASIN
0451211472
Language
English

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About the author

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ken follett

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Ken Follett is one of the world's most successful authors. Over 170 million copies of the 36 books he has written have been sold in over 80 countries and in 33 languages.

Born on June 5th, 1949 in Cardiff, Wales, the son of a tax inspector, Ken was educated at state schools and went on to graduate from University College, London, with an Honours degree in Philosophy – later to be made a Fellow of the College in 1995.

He started his career as a reporter, first with his hometown newspaper the South Wales Echo and then with the London Evening News. Subsequently, he worked for a small London publishing house, Everest Books, eventually becoming Deputy Managing Director.

Ken's first major success came with the publication of Eye of the Needle in 1978. A World War II thriller set in England, this book earned him the 1979 Edgar Award for Best Novel from the Mystery Writers of America. It remains one of Ken's most popular books.

In 1989, Ken's epic novel about the building of a medieval cathedral, The Pillars of the Earth, was published. It reached number one on best-seller lists everywhere and was turned into a major television series produced by Ridley Scott, which aired in 2010. World Without End, the sequel to The Pillars of the Earth, proved equally popular when it was published in 2007.

Ken's new book, The Evening and the Morning, will be published in September 2020. It is a prequel to The Pillars of the Earth and is set around the year 1,000, when Kingsbridge was an Anglo-Saxon settlement threatened by Viking invaders.

Ken has been active in numerous literacy charities and was president of Dyslexia Action for ten years. He was chair of the National Year of Reading, a joint initiative between government and businesses. He is also active in many Stevenage charities and is President of the Stevenage Community Trust and Patron of Home-Start Hertfordshire.

Ken, who loves music almost as much as he loves books, is an enthusiastic bass guitar player. He lives in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, with his wife Barbara, the former Labour Member of Parliament for Stevenage. Between them they have five children, six grandchildren and two Labradors.

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Community Reviews

Rating(4 / 5.0, 100 votes)
5 stars
32(32%)
4 stars
31(31%)
3 stars
37(37%)
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100 reviews All reviews
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VAD_S
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Ultimul zbor al unui hidroavion peste Atlantic a avut loc chiar în primele zile ale intrării Angliei în război. Mai mult ca singur că a fost un zbor obișnuit. Follett imaginează acest ultim zbor ca fiind o adevărată aventură a unor oameni care își părăsesc vechea viață. Într-o singură noapte fiecare pasager va avea propria aventură, iar la capătul drumului va deveni o altă persoană.
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zaganGao
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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I loved the book, however it was not as suspenseful in the air as I thought it would be. Follett did a good job of the character development of everyone, would love a sequel. Another good Follett book that takes you in right from the beginning.
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Sleepypups
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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I can't find what I loved so much about The Pillars of the Earth in Follett's other books. I think I'll stick to that trilogy and then possibly the Century trilogy but steer clear of the others...and I regret to be saying this.
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TenshiMaria
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Un libro scritto davvero bene, l'idea di fondere fatti storici realmente accaduti e personaggi immaginari strutturati molto bene con i loro intrecci rende la lettura appassionante. La lettura non stanca in quanto si passa ad analizzare ciascun personaggio alternando tra questi, e penso che sia questa la vera forza di questo romanzo la cui storia non mi ha deluso.
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InspectorLunge
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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A Strange Kind of Meeting


An odd group of people will fly over the Atlantic Ocean for an estimated period of 30 hours. Among others, you’ll find a charming thief, a British noble family, a German scientist, a runaway maiden and a killer with his mob.

In those 30 hours they’ll have plenty of time to socialize in all possible ways, although it’s hard to imagine one of them having the slightest conversation to any of the others. However, we could always provide ourselves some entertainment in a crazy guessing game:

Will they play Monopoly or Bingo? Or maybe they’ll be more in the mood for Roulette?
Will they talk about the BDSM in Fifty Shades of Grey or discuss Shakespeare’s most relevant plays?
Will the burglar start stealing everything around or make a pass at the runaway maiden?
Will the murder start shooting everyone except the pilot, or socialize with the German scientist to improve his German accent?

Etc, etc... we could go on endlessly like this, without getting nowhere but here
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Gabriell_Braga
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Probably could earn another half star. Not Ken Follett’s best but fast paced enough to keep reading at a lively pace. The good people, male and female were suitably good looking, the baddies were mean and ugly. The good lookers had lots of indulgent fully described sex at, sometimes, the oddest times. The baddies did lots of rape threats and unwelcome grabbing. However the stars were earned mainly because of the Clipper descriptions and the analysis of political factions at the start of WWII.
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Hachiman2424
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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This novel takes place in 1939 just after England has entered World War II. It's told from multiple points of view, all from people who will take a flight aboard a Pan-Am Clipper (a truly luxurious (and historically accurate) airplane in the second 2/3rds of the book. This is sort of like a "Murder on the Orient Express" set-up although more thriller than who-dunnit mystery. Passengers include business people, aritocratic families, a debutante, a film star, a petty thief, etc. They all have reasons for being on this luxury plane ride across the Atlantic, some of them because they want to be there and some because they have to be. The thriller/action part of the plot surrounds the lead engineer of the plane who is forced to sabotage it in order to save his wife who has been kidnapped in America. Follett leaves the reasons for this unclear at first as well as who the kidnappers are but uses it to build the suspense. In the end it turns out to be quite a complicated plot but I won't spoil it for you.

This is a well-plotted novel; the suspense builds as we make our way through the story and we get to see events from several perspectives. Mr Follett does a great job building his characters and even though there are quite a lot of them, it is easy to follow the action because we know them so well. And he does a fantastic job of establishing the atmosphere. The descriptions of the scenes and especially the dialog of the characters really brought me in to the era. Sometimes it was like I was watching a Humphrey Bogart movie. I highly recommend it for fans of WWII era historical/thriller fiction.
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