War & Peace Quote by Ken Follett

Calling World War II a "favorite period" is a deliberate provocation, the kind that makes you flinch before you understand what Follett is really signaling: not nostalgia for catastrophe, but a writer's appetite for narrative density. WWII is the rare historical setting where stakes are instantly legible, moral choices are pressurized, and ordinary lives are shoved into extraordinary corridors of power. Saying it's his favorite is shorthand for "this is where stories run hottest."

The second clause does the quieter work. "I'm in the middle of writing my fourth novel set in that era" frames the obsession as craft, not fetish. Follett is announcing a long-term project: returning to a sandbox where readers already know the map, yet still crave fresh routes through it. Fourth time back suggests not repetition but refinement; he’s built an engine that reliably produces momentum, suspense, and a sense of lived-in history.

There’s also a market-aware subtext. WWII remains one of publishing's most bankable moral theaters: the backdrop carries instant emotional charge, and the audience arrives pre-invested. Follett, a master of page-turning historical fiction, is implicitly defending genre pleasure as serious engagement. He’s not claiming the era is enjoyable; he’s claiming it’s inexhaustible. The line lands because it compresses a whole philosophy of storytelling into an offhand confession: some periods are not "liked" so much as endlessly writable.