60 pages • 2 hours read
Ken FollettNever
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Literary Context: Ken Follett's Spy Fiction of the 21st Century
Ken Follett is a multiple award-winning author of thrillers and historical epics. Most of his publications of the past two decades have been sprawling, multi-volume historical novels such as the Century Trilogy or the Kingsbridge Series. But for the two decades before that, his writing style was dramatically different. Tense and action-packed stand-alone thrillers were published at breakneck pace, with him averaging the publication of one and a half books each year between 1976 and 2004. The settings were often WWII, like his breakthrough literary masterpieces Eye of the Needle (1978) or Key to Rebecca (1980), while others focused on intrigues of the Cold War, such as Lie Down with Lions (1985).
With the publication of Never (2021), his career has taken another twist. While continuing his recent trajectory of accurately researched, lengthy tomes, he has also returned to the espionage thriller roots of his early writing. He has even returned to his successful formula of strong female protagonists as was at that time surprisingly found in his groundbreaking Eye of the Needle. In an interview in Publisher’s Weekly, Follett explains his choice and why he believes that spy thrillers remain relevant in the 21st century:
The geopolitical stakes are higher today than they've ever been. There are more weapons and more truly evil people out there eager to use them. That makes the world a much more dangerous place than it was even 20 years ago. Every government on the globe is beefing up its espionage capabilities. Added to that is the fact that today anyone can be a spy. All you need is a cellphone, a camera and access to the Net. The way I see it, the spy thriller will rule in the 21st century” (Goat, Paul A. “The Spy Thriller Rules.” Publishers Weekly, vol. 255, no. 18, 2008, p. 42).
The setting of Never, like many of his over 30 novels, is a war, but instead of the popular WWII or Cold War period, or even the WWI period he used in Fall of Giants (2010), he instead chose to imagine a world on the edge of a nuclear WWIII. This setting’s believability is bolstered by Follett’s belief in the ubiquity of surveillance technology, where the toolkit of the spy is baked into everyday technology accessible to nearly everybody.
Political Context: Globalization and International Relations
Many historians locate the beginnings of modern globalization in the Age of New Imperialism, which lasted from the 1800s to the start of WWI in 1914. During this period, European nations competed with one another for control of countries in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. They were motivated by economic, political, racial, and military reasons and often justified the colonization of other lands on religious, racist, or pseudo-scientific grounds using theories such as Social Darwinism. This theory argued that certain races or societies were more fit to survive and thus were superior to others. This theory is now regarded as being wholly racist and fallacious, nor is it actually rooted in any belief or hypothesis espoused by Charles Darwin. Traces of these justifications exist in modern spy agencies like the CIA and European counterparts like the French DGSE (seen in Never) or the British MI6, famous from James Bond movies.
While they did not begin until the 20th century (pre-WWI for the British and Americans and post-WWII for the French), international spying and global intrigue happened throughout the Age of Imperialism. One example treated in imperialist Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim (1900-1901) is called the Great Game. This was a rivalry between Britain and Russia that began in 1830 and lasted throughout the 19th century. It was primarily a struggle for control over territory and trade routes in Central Asia, with much of the action playing out in Afghanistan, which served as a buffer between British and Russian spheres of influence. That struggle took a modern twist with the 1979 Soviet invasion, which resulted in the 10-year Afghan-Soviet War (1979-1989), during which the US supported the mujahideen, or Islamic guerilla fighters, who fought to repel the Soviets. The Taliban developed out of these mujahideen, and they were in power and able to provide a safe haven to Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, the group behind the 9/11 attack on the US.
The terrorist group Abdul hunts reflects the increasing power of globalization in the 21st century. While the leader is called “the Afghan” at times, this is not because he is a national of that country but rather because he fought there in the war against the US (2001-2021). Participation in the international drug trade funds his terrorist activities. In the novel, Abdul tracks a shipment of cocaine from Latin America across the Saharan desert and Mediterranean Sea into Europe. The intelligence work of gathering information is done clandestinely by spy agencies like the CIA, while more overt police or military actions take place in joint operations or under the auspices of countries like France, who have political authority in places like former colony Chad and, to a lesser degree, Libya.
China, some argue, engages in a new form of imperialism that is neither covert intelligence work nor overt military or political occupation. This is sometimes called neo-colonialism and is found throughout Africa and involves Chinese funding and technological support in return for political influence, military bases, and special economic zones. Examples of this in the novel are the proposed Lake Chad project, or the Port Sudan project. These projects keep both Chad and Sudan firmly within the sphere of Chinese influence and are a way that international relations play out in the 21st century.
Geographical Context: 21st-Century Proxy Warfare
In the period between WWII and the present day, wars between the great powers, the US and Russia and increasingly China, have not taken the form of direct but rather proxy warfare. While there is a long history of this type of warfare dating back to classical antiquity and the Middle Ages, the Cold War period (1947-1991) saw an upsurge in this approach. This was in part because Europe and the then Soviet Union (1922-1991) were still recovering from the physical ravages of war but especially because of fears that direct conflict between the two superpowers (the US and the USSR) would result in nuclear war. Some important proxy wars include the US war in Vietnam (1955-1975) and the Korean War (1950-1953), which started in 1950 and resulted in the bifurcation of the peninsula into two countries, both of which play key roles in this novel.
Many military actions here, whether overt or covert, are a kind of proxy warfare between players who fall under the influence of either China or the West (primarily the US and France). Sometimes the levels of connection are layered and complex, with North Korea, a state dependent on China for most of its military and humanitarian aid, selling guns to Sudan, which uses them to attack Chad, a former colony of France. Chad’s attack on Port Sudan, which results in the death of Chinese nationals, is performed with American-made weapons. Although rebels stole the weapons from the Americans, China still blames the US for the death of its citizens, as Chad is within the Western sphere of influence. The reader sees escalation of tensions that lead eventually to WWIII throughout the novel, from small attacks in contested waters to larger missile attacks and invasions across the DMZ by Korean forces of both nations. A 2019 report by “America First” argues that while “[p]roxy warfare will shape twenty-first century conflicts for the foreseeable future,” it will no longer follow “Cold War norms.” The report continues:
The erosion of state power, rise of transnational social movements, and proliferation of advanced military and communications technology are shifting the horizons of strategic surprise. The enhanced military capacity of former Cold War client states to engage either covertly or overtly in conflicts is erasing front lines, transforming alliances, and reshaping battlefield dynamics. Whereas Moscow and Washington once set the rules of the game, the number of state and non-state sponsors of proxy forces is growing in today’s globalized market. Today a complex mesh of partnerships among states, corporations, mercenaries, and militias is changing the way wars are fought and won (Rondeaux, Candace, and David Sterman. “Twenty-First Century Proxy Warfare: Confronting Strategic Innovation in a Multipolar World.” New America, 2019).
Readers see this clearly in the novel in the many instances where China and the US have little control over what had formerly been client states, North and South Korea. Both nations act directly against the wishes of their benefactors. Non-state actors like international substance cartels or terrorists also evade control and often act independently of more powerful state actors, sometimes using novel methods like cyberwarfare.
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