Winter of the World

Winter of the World is written by the Welsh-born author Ken Follett, a historical novel published in 2012 is the second book in the Century Trilogy. Revolving about a family saga that covers the interrelated experiences of American, Russian, German and British families during the 20th century. The novel follows the second generation of those families, born to the main characters of the first novel, Fall of Giants, and is followed by a generation of those families in the third and final book in the series, Edge of Eternity.

The story starts in 1933, with the Nazi seizure of power, includes World War II, and concludes in 1949.

The story follows characters from Germany, Britain, the USA and the Soviet Union, who become linked by events leading to World War II, and continues through the war and its immediate aftermath. The major characters are often children of the characters who were seen in Fall of Giants. The novel covers a wide range of world events during the period, including the rise of Nazism, the ascent of Franco in Spain, the short-lived growth of British fascism, Action T4, the Battle of Moscow, the Blitz, the Normandy landings, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the development of the atom bomb, the fall of Berlin and many more. The families, spread across four countries, are related to each other though they themselves aren't often aware of it.

Point of view characters include:

Carla von Ulrich- the daughter of Reichstag member Walter von Ulrich and magazine editor Maude Fitzherbert. She was rejected for a medical scholarship due to anti-female policies in Nazi Germany, but takes a job as a nurse in Berlin. After her father is murdered by the Gestapo for protesting Action T4, she helps her friends- who are German Resistance members- transmit vital battle plans to the Soviet Union. Carla is raped by five Red Army soldiers during the fall of Berlin, and later gives birth to a son that she raises with her mother and her husband, Werner Franck. She also adopts a fourteen-year-old girl named Rebecca, whom she rescued from being raped by Red Army soldiers.