Reading Project Damien Branger
PS1

Paper Money
Ken Follett

The author:

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Ken Follett (born 5 June 1949) is a Welsh author of thrillers and historical novels. He has sold more than 130 million copies. His main successes are The Pillars of the Earth, The Key to Rebecca, Triple, Lie Down with Lions, Eye of the Needle…
He published Paper Money in 1977 as Zachary Stone, as The Modigliani Scandal
On his website (http://www.ken-follett.com), he declared: “I was almost good when I wrote The Modigliani Scandal and Paper Money. They were the last two novels before I found success with Eye of the Needle. By this time my storytelling skills had improved, and these books have more depth than my earlier efforts. They are too short, however, the characters have no past and the action often moves too quickly for the reader to enjoy. For hard-core fans, I have allowed these two to be republished in most countries, but included a preface for each emphasising that they were early works. I was afraid I might get a lot of mail from disappointed readers, but in the event I didn't get any. People seem to enjoy them, so they can't be too bad.”
Although he criticizes his book, he wrote, in the introduction of Paper Money, that he qualifies it as “the best of my unsuccessful books”.
In this introduction, he says that he wrote this book for highlight how crime, high finance, and journalism are corruptly interconnected.

Particularities of the book:
The action takes place during a single day in the life of a London evening newspaper. (Ken Follett worked for such a newspaper 4 years before he wrote Paper money. Source: introduction of the book)
The book is divided in parts, each corresponding to one hour, from six a.m. to four p.m.
The book is composed of interlaced stories
In Paper Money, there are more than ten main characters, which is a lot compared to other Ken