Age of Great Change (2 Volumes)

At the end of the eighteenth century, Britain's textile industry was undergoing an unprecedented upheaval. The spinning jenny, the water frame, and the factory system appeared one after another; machines replaced hand labor, factories squeezed out villages, and the old order of life was rapidly torn apart. Meanwhile, war spread across the European continent, and taxes, conscription, and laws suppressing workers' associations fell one after another on ordinary people. Set in the English town of Kingsbridge during this period, the book follows a female textile worker, a small workshop owner sympathetic to workers, and a cloth merchant struggling to survive in the cracks, writing about how they make a living, love, quarrel, and betray amid technological change, soaring prices, labor conflicts, and wartime mobilization. They are neither heroes who change history nor background figures crushed by history, but ordinary people who preserve dignity and faith in every choice. With his customary meticulous historical research and tight narrative, Ken Follett weaves a family's fate together with the turning of an era, letting readers see how "great change" falls concretely on every meal, every wage, and every person's hands. The book is divided into two volumes and is the fourth installment of the Kingsbridge series (following The Pillars of the Earth, World Without End, and A Column of Fire).