Ken Follett

When Notre-Dame reopens, count Ken Follett among the many artisans who erected it, said Alex Green in The Independent (U.K.). The best-selling British author cried last April 15 when he turned on his television to see Paris’ great cathedral in flames. And when the main structure survived the blaze, he quickly committed to help raise restoration funds by writing a tribute to the

1163 Gothic wonder. Follett, 70, had been an expert the media turned to when the blaze struck because his bestknown book, Pillars of the Earth, is possibly the world’s best-selling book about a cathedral. To write that 1989 historical novel, Follett had climbed into the rafters of a few medieval cathedrals, so he knew the attic as a rare weakness. Still, the collapse of Notre-Dame’s roof shocked him. “In the life of every boy there is a painful moment when he realizes that his father is not all-powerful and invulnerable,” he says. “The fall of the spire made me think of that moment.”

Follett required only a week to produce Notre-Dame, an 80-page tribute and current best-seller, said Gregory McNamee in Kirkus Reviews. “It was written,” he says, “in the heat of the moment.”

His work earned him a June tour of the cathedral, during which he learned that because today’s trees aren’t robust enough to support the vast roof, the new beams will consist of steel or even plastic. “It will not be visible,” he says, “so in a sense it doesn’t really matter.” He came away optimistic, though, that the French might just complete the restoration as soon as 2024, in time for the Paris Olympics. “If anyone can do it,” he says, “they can.”