Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth does several things at once. It is a building story (a cathedral rising in Kingsbridge over decades), a political thriller set during the twelfth-century civil war between Stephen and Maud, and a family saga that follows Tom Builder, Prior Philip, Aliena and Jack across a lifetime. Most “books like Pillars” lists ignore that mix. This one matches each pick to the part of Pillars it delivers best, so you can choose by what you actually loved.

1. The Cathedral of the Sea by Ildefonso Falcones

Closest match. Best for: readers who loved the cathedral and the climb from nothing.

Arnau Estanyol is the son of a serf who flees to fourteenth-century Barcelona, where the church of Santa María del Mar is being built by the city’s own people. Arnau works as one of the porters who carry its stones from the quarry, and his rise from that work to wealth and power, with the Inquisition never far behind, gives the book the same arc as Jack’s in Pillars. The church is real and still stands, which makes the building scenes land harder.

If you want Pillars set in medieval Spain, start here.

2. Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd

Best for: readers who loved the generational sweep and want even more of it.

Rutherfurd follows a handful of families around Salisbury from prehistory to the twentieth century, with Stonehenge, Old Sarum and the building of Salisbury Cathedral as anchor points. Each section is its own story, and you watch the same family lines rise, fall and cross each other across centuries. It is a standalone novel on Follett’s scale, and the cathedral chapters are the closest thing to Kingsbridge in English fiction.

A whole history of England told through one place.

3. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

Best for: readers who loved Prior Philip and the politics of the church.

In 1327, the Franciscan friar William of Baskerville and his young novice Adso arrive at a wealthy Benedictine abbey in northern Italy, where monks are dying one by one. The murders lead to the abbey’s labyrinthine library and a book someone will kill to keep hidden. It works as a detective story, and underneath it is a sharp picture of how monasteries ran, who held power inside them, and what they feared.

The medieval monastery as a crime scene.

4. Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset

Best for: readers who cared most about Aliena and the women of Pillars.

Kristin grows up on her father’s estate in fourteenth-century Norway, defies him to marry the charming and unreliable Erlend, and lives with the consequences for the rest of her life. Undset published it as three novels (The Wreath, The Wife and The Cross), now usually sold in one volume, and it was central to her Nobel Prize in 1928. It moves more slowly than Follett and goes much deeper into faith, marriage and guilt.

The medieval epic told from inside one woman’s life.

5. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

Best for: readers who loved watching fortunes rise and fall across generations.

Wang Lung is a poor farmer in early twentieth-century China who marries O-Lan, a former kitchen slave, and builds his life on the land through famine, flight and sudden wealth. It is the furthest from Pillars in time and place, but it shares Follett’s core subject: how hard work, luck and pride decide what a family becomes. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 and is far shorter than anything else here.

The family saga at its most stripped back.

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The Kingsbridge series in order

If you haven’t read past Pillars, the rest of Follett’s Kingsbridge books are the most direct follow-up. Each works on its own, but they share a town, a cathedral and family lines.

1. The Evening and the Morning (2020): a prequel set around the year 1000, when Kingsbridge is still a small settlement.
2. The Pillars of the Earth (1989): the twelfth century and the building of the cathedral.
3. World Without End (2007): the same town two centuries later, during the Black Death.
4. A Column of Fire (2017): sixteenth-century religious wars and Elizabethan espionage.
5. The Armour of Light (2023): the Industrial Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.

Reading in publication order (starting with Pillars) is just as good, and it is how most fans read them.

Where to start

• Want another cathedral story: The Cathedral of the Sea.
• Want the biggest possible saga: Sarum.
• Want a mystery with your Middle Ages: The Name of the Rose.
• Want a deeper, slower character epic: Kristin Lavransdatter.
• Want something shorter between doorstops: The Good Earth.

For more historical fiction across other eras and places, see our guide to the best historical fiction books that transport you through time and place.