Oprah picks Follett for book club

Ken Follett has been a published author since 1978

Oprah Winfrey has chosen a novel by British author Ken Follett for her next book club selection.

The talk-show host chose The Pillars of the Earth, an epic about building the world's biggest Gothic cathedral, as the 60th selection for her club.

"I got to 800 pages and I slowed myself down because I didn't want it to end," Winfrey said.

Follett, 58, said he was "thrilled" and "very grateful" his 973-page novel had been chosen.

"Her endorsement will bring my work to the attention of her many millions of fans, and for that I am very grateful," the Welsh author said.

The Pillars of the Earth was first published in 1989.

Set in the 12th century town of Kingsbury, the story is about the struggle between good and evil.

Oprah's book club has been running for five years

Publishers have shipped 612,000 copies of the book to retailers in anticipation of the selection.

Oprah's Book Club has approximately one million members and each of its selections have skyrocketed to the top of bestsellers lists.

Her other picks this year were Sidney Poitier's memoir Measure of a Man, Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel The Road, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides and Love in the Time of Cholera by Nobel Prize-winning Colombian Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Follett's latest novel, World Without End, is a sequel to The Pillars of the Earth, set two centuries later.