Ken Follett rules out non-fiction and memoir

Bestselling author Ken Follett said "it doesn't appeal" to him to write non-fiction and insists his life lacks the necessary drama for memoir.

During a press conference on Friday (5th November) for the launch of his new thriller Never (Pan Macmillan) Follett said despite his "meticulous" research for his novels, it has "never crossed" his mind to turn his hand to non-fiction. "I'm not clever enough, I'm not expert in any particular field," he said. He also insisted his life story "is not very dramatic" and would not make a good memoir because "there's not much drama".

Never is a thriller set in the modern day, and features a female US President and a global crisis that threatens to lead to World War Three. He said he was inspired to write the novel by researching the lead up to the First World War and wanted to explore if "reasonable, moderate men and women find themselves dragged, against their will, into World War Three". He told journalists that he had conducted extensive research for the novel, interviewing experts such as former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and former British national security advisor Kim Darroch on potential real-world "flashpoints" such as Ukraine, Kashmir, Taiwan and the South China Sea.

Follett said: "The world is in more danger today than at any previous time, certainly in my lifetime and perhaps ever". He said nuclear war was no longer the only threat: "There's also the danger of a virus that could kill us all and the third danger is climate change." 

When asked about the recent controversy surrounding Sally Rooney's decision to turn down a bid from an Israeli publisher to release a Hebrew version of her most recent novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You (Faber) due to her stance on the conflict in Palestine, Follett said he "understood her feeling" but would not do the same himself. He said he would follow the message in his book that it's "much better to avoid war than go into it". 

"Like Sally Rooney I feel that the Israeli government does a lot of things that I don't approve of and I wouldn't like my country to behave like that. On the other hand, the Israeli government is not all Israelis and I'm very happy for Israelis to read my books," he said. "I don't want to criticise Sally Rooney. For me it would be too blanket to ban a whole country because I don't like their government. I don't much like the government of China but my books sell millions in China. I'm happy about that. Most of my stories are about people fighting for their freedom so I think they might have a slight, tiny good influence in repressive countries."

He also revealed he has been writing another story but is "not ready to talk about it". He said he would write another historical novel "or again do something completely different. Everything depends on how good the idea is," he said, revealing he once threw away a year's worth of work on a thriller set in the world of banking because he did not think it was good enough. "It broke my heart but it was better than publishing a bad book," he said.