Apeirogon

by Colum McCann

From the National Book Award-winning and bestselling author of Let the Great World Spin comes an epic novel rooted in the real-life friendship between two men united by loss.

Colum McCann's most ambitious work to date, Apeirogon--named for a shape with a countably infinite number of sides--is a tour de force concerning friendship, love, loss, and belonging.

Bassam Aramin is Palestinian. Rami Elhanan is Israeli. They inhabit a world of conflict that colors every aspect of their daily lives, from the roads they are allowed to drive on, to the schools their daughters, Abir and Smadar, each attend, to the checkpoints, both physical and emotional, they must negotiate.

Their worlds shift irreparably after ten-year-old Abir is killed by a rubber bullet and thirteen-year-old Smadar becomes the victim of suicide bombers. When Bassam and Rami learn of each other's stories, they recognize the loss that connects them and they attempt to use their grief as a weapon for peace.

McCann crafts Apeirogon out of a universe of fictional and nonfictional material. He crosses centuries and continents, stitching together time, art, history, nature, and politics in a tale both heartbreaking and hopeful. Musical, cinematic, muscular, delicate, and soaring, Apeirogon is a novel for our time.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Book Club, Middle East, Literary Fiction, Israel, Contemporary

15 pages, Audio CD

First published September 15, 2019

About the author

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Colum McCann is the author of three collections of short stories and six novels, including "Apeirogon," published in Spring 2020. His other books include "TransAtlantic," "Let the Great World Spin," "This Side of Brightness,""Dancer" and “Zoli,” all of which were international best-sellers.

His newest book, American Mother, written with Diane Foley, is due to be published in March 2024.

American Mother takes us deep into the story of Diane Foley; whose son Jim, a freelance journalist, was held captive by ISIS before being beheaded in the Syrian desert.
Diane’s voice is channeled into searing reality by Colum, who brings us on a journey of strength, resilience, and radical empathy.

"American Mother is a book that will shake your soul out," says Sting.

Apeirogon (2020) became a best-seller on four continent.

“Let the Great World Spin” won the National Book Award in 2009. His fiction has been published in over 40 languages and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Paris Review and other places. He has written for numerous publications including The Irish Times, Die Zeit, La Republicca, Paris Match, The New York Times, the Guardian and the Independent.

In December 2023 Colum (as co-founder of Narrative 4) was the 2023 Humanitarian Award nominee, awarded by the United Nations delegations at the Ambassador's Ball in New York City.

Colum has won numerous international awards. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the Irish association of artists, Aosdana. He has also received a Chevalier des Artes et des Lettres from the French government. He is the cofounder of the global non-profit story exchange organisation Narrative 4.

In 2003 Colum was named Esquire magazine's "Writer of the Year." Other awards and honors include a Pushcart Prize, the Rooney Prize, the Irish Independent Hughes and Hughes/Sunday Independent Novel of the Year 2003, and the 2002 Ireland Fund of Monaco Princess Grace Memorial Literary Award. He was recently inducted into the Hennessy Hall of Fame for Irish Literature.

His short film "Everything in this Country Must," directed by Gary McKendry, was nominated for an Academy Award Oscar in 2005.

Colum was born in Dublin in 1965 and began his career as a journalist in The Irish Press. In the early 1980's he took a bicycle across North America and then worked as a wilderness guide in a program for juvenile delinquents in Texas. After a year and a half in Japan, he and his wife Allison moved to New York where they currently live with their three children, Isabella, John Michael and Christian.

Colum teaches in Hunter College in New York, in the Creative Writing program, with fellow novelists Peter Carey and Tea Obreht.

Colum has completed his new novel, "Apeirogon." Crafted out of a universe of fictional and nonfictional material, McCann tells the story of Bassam Aramin and Rami Elhanan. One is Israeli. One is Palestinian. Both are fathers. Both have lost their daughters to the conflict. When Bassam and Rami learn of each other's stories they recognize the loss that connects them, and they begin to use their grief as a weapon for peace.

In the novel McCann crosses centuries and continents. He stitches together time, art, history, nature and politics in a tale both heartbreaking and hopeful. Musical, cinematic, muscular, delicate and soaring, Apeirogon is a novel for our times.

It is scheduled for release in the U.S in February 2020.


Advance copies will be available here on GoodReads!!!!

Reviews

[Angela M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything about this book is extraordinary. I was not surprised since Colum McCann is one of my favorite writers. I’ve read all of his published books. This book though, is different from anything I’ve read by him. McCann’s words best describe it : “This is a hybrid novel with invention at its core, a work of storytelling which, like all storytelling, weaves together elements of speculation, memory, fact, and imagination....” The heart of the book is the real story of Rami Elhanan, an Israeli whose thirteen year old daughter Smadar was killed by suicide bombers and Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian, father of ten year old Abir who was shot after leaving a candy store. Their friendship is forged on shared sorrow and on empathy, meeting through organizations for grieving families, both Israeli and Palestinian, working together sharing their stories with each other and the world.

This book is breathtaking, literally in the detailed descriptions of what happened to these two young girls, breathtaking in how it conveys the depth of grief of their families and equally in the illustration of empathy and in the unique structure. It’s not a straightforward narrative. It’s an all encompassing blend of stories about historical figures, quotes from literature, biblical references, art and science and even a few photographs, none of which are more affecting than those of Abir and Smadar. The linkages are both fascinating and jolting. And the birds, so many images - real, sculptured , none more affecting than the dove. Everything is connected. Everything has meaning. Everything is related to the deaths of ten year old Abir and thirteen year old Smadar, to the deaths of those who were killed with them, to the deaths of those who were killed before them and those who we’re killed after them, to those who happened to be Israeli, and those who happened to be Palestinian and to the Holocaust victims, to all these human beings. It’s epic in scope. I read it slowly because I didn’t want to miss a single word or a connection between people past and present, between events past and present, between things past and present and the heart of this story. The emotional impact is quite stunning.

The book moves around in time, from their pasts to their presents to the moments that their daughters were killed. This book is as cerebral as it is emotional and the combined effect leaves me in awe of Colum McCann. The prose is unparalleled. It’s the kind of book that left me changed. I highly recommended it to fans of the author and to anyone who is looking for an absolutely unique reading experience. My favorite of the year and definitely one of my all time favorites. Of course, I had to find out more about Bassam and Rami and I read numerous articles, interviews, etc and it was obvious that McCann more than does justice to their stories. It’s worth taking the time to read and listen to some of these in their own words . What hope, what empathy is possible even after the impossibly horrific thing that happened to their daughters.

I received an advanced copy of this book from Random House through NetGalley.

[Paromjit · Rating 5 out of 5]

On the Booker Prize Longlist!

An eye opening epic blend of fact and fiction from Colum McCann, ambitiously structured with its echoes and inspirations of 1001 nights and by the Apeirogon, a shape with a countably infinite number of sides. The non-linear narrative interweaves the tragedies that befall two fathers on different sides of the Israeli-Palestine conflict, and the endless cycle of the horrors and terrors of history repeating itself. Rami Elhanan, an Israeli, lost his daughter, 13 year old Smadar, killed by a suicide bomber and Bassan Aranin, a Palestinian, lost his 10 year old daughter, Abir, shot outside her school by a member of the border police. The griefstricken fathers find a commonality in their grief, a humanity and spawn connections across the political divide, driven by hope and straining to break that cycle of death, grief, brutality and violence of the conflict.

McCann's inventive and speculative narrative is all encompassing, fragmentary, apparently random pieces of an extraordinary, sensitive, disparate storytelling and facts, of history, the arts, religion, mythology, poetry, nature, mathematics, memory, philosophy, literature, birds, and so much more, like tiny pieces of a huge complex jigsaw puzzle that slowly builds a picture of connections. Profound, emotionally heartbreaking, unforgettable and tearfully moving, yet driven by hope, this is an unmissable and original read. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Bloomsbury for an ARC.

[Orsodimondo · Rating 5 out of 5]

LIBRO-MONDO


Pablo Picasso, 1961.

Bassat e Rami giunsero gradualmente a capire che avrebbero usato la potenza del loro dolore come arma.

Sono cinquecento pagine divise in milleuno capitoli (cantos), proprio come le storie raccolte e raccontate in Le mille e una notte: quindi mediamente ogni capitolo, non supera la mezza pagina.
I cantos sono pieni di fatti, dati, notizie, che partono all’apparenza sotto forma di curiosità aneddoto spigolatura e man mano si trasformano in eventi, pietre miliari, spaziando come un caleidoscopio a destra e sinistra, sopra e sotto, a 360°, da nord a sud e da est a ovest, dallo zenit al nadir e viceversa.
Colum McCann avanza con “superba lentezza” per associazione di idee, torna indietro, ripercorre varie volte corridoi già battuti, cerca elementi nuovi, aggiunge, si ripete, divaga, ma poi arriva sempre al cuore del problema.
Il tono spesso raggiunge la nota ironica attraverso il paradosso e l’assurdità delle situazioni, per quanto spesso agghiaccianti - più spesso è intonato su un asciutto lirismo, e finisce col diventare epico.
È tutto di una tale densità e intensità, è tutto così prezioso, nulla di superfluo, che ogni tanto bisogna interrompere la lettura per riprendere fiato. Perché è facile restare senza. Senza fiato.
E con il cuore in gola.


Check Poit 300 a Bethlehem.

Apeirogon è la forma geometrica di un poligono con un numero infinito di lati di lunghezza qualsiasi. In greco, infatti, apeiron significa illimitato, infinito.
Visto nell’insieme un apeirogon si avvicina alla forma di un cerchio - che come ricorda McCann è ciò che si ottiene dividendo la morte per la vita - ma a un ingrandimento ogni piccola parte appare come una linea retta.
L'Apeirogon si può intendere come il simbolo dell'umanità e del collegamento di ogni essere vivente con tutti gli altri.
Apeirogon è il tentativo di Colum McCann di rappresentare le infinite sfaccettature del conflitto tra israeliani e palestinesi, e tra palestinesi e israeliani.
McCann squaderna ogni dettaglio, lo viviseziona, fino a cercarne l’atomo originale.
In arabo mille significa innumerevole, e quindi milleuno diventa infinito.
L’infinità dei punti di vista. Bastano due specchi l’uno di fronte all’altro per formare un labirinto, diceva Borges: e McCann fa proprio questo, prende Bassam e Rami, e li usa come specchi per raccontare un labirinto di storie.
Che finisce con l’essere una storia sola. Quella di un israeliano che è contro l’Occupazione e di un palestinese che studia la Shoah: hanno entrambi perso una figlia per colpa di come vanno le cose nella loro terra, sono amici, e insieme combattono per la pace.
È un lungo libro che mischia con tecnica sofisticata, a strati e incastri e ceselli, con predisposizione in qualche modo matematica in qualche altro sinfonica, storia cronaca finzione, romanzo e giornalismo: un libro che parla di una terra divisa tra due popoli divisi scritto da uno scrittore che di divisioni è esperto perché viene dall’Irlanda, paese da sempre diviso.



Quando Smadar aveva un anno suo padre, fotografo e grafico pubblicitario, la ritrasse in una struggente immagine nella quale la cucciola appare di profonda bellezza e intensità. Rami usò la foto per il manifesto del movimento per la pace (in seguito ribattezzato Combattenti per la Pace). E la didascalia sotto il primo piano della piccola recitava:
Come sarà la vita in Israele quando Smadar avrà quindici anni?
Smadar è saltata in aria in un attentato due settimane prima di compiere quattordici anni (4 settembre 1997).
La vendetta è la pace.



Quando Abir fu colpita alla nuca da un proiettile di gomma sparato da un soldato israeliano aveva dieci anni (16 gennaio 2007) e stava per entrare a scuola per il compito di matematica, materia per la quale era molto portata.
La sera prima nel retro del cortile della sua scuola erano state scaricate diverse sezioni prefabbricate del Muro che avrebbe diviso in due il cortile della scuola. La maggioranza degli operai impegnati nel lavoro di costruzione del Muro erano palestinesi.
La guardia di confine che sparò alla figlia di Bassam testimoniò che fra gli ordini ricevuti c’era quello di proteggere gli operai.
Abir muore due giorni dopo all’ospedale Hadassah di Gerusalemme, lo stesso dove dieci anni prima era nata Smadar.
La vendetta è la pace.


Smadar Elhanan 1983 - 1997 e Abir Aramin 1997 – 2007.

(Eliezer) Ben Yehuda, a cui è dedicata la strada dell’attentato kamikaze in cui morì Smadar, la figlia di Rami, era un giornalista nato in Bielorussia che si trasferì nella Palestina della dominazione ottomana, e viene considerato il fondatore dell’ebraico moderno.
Afferma McCann che Ben Yehuda, proprio come Einsteind, disse che
ebrei e arabi erano ‘mishpacha’, una famiglia, e che avrebbero dovuto condividere la terra e vivere insieme. Molte delle nuove parole ebraiche che lui aiutò a coniare avevano radici arabe. Le due lingue, disse, erano sorelle che, proprio come le due popolazioni, avrebbero potuto convivere l’una accanto all’altra.
L’esplosione, portata a termine da tre attentatori suicidi che avevano pochi anni più di Smadar, uccise cinque persone, tra cui tre ragazze di 14 anni, una delle quali Smadar, la figlia di Rami: la pagina Wikipedia che racconta tutti gli attentati perpetrati in questa importante strada del centro di Gerusalemme (almeno dieci tra il 1948 e il 2001) informa che Smadar era la figlia dell’attivista per la pace Nurit Peled-Elhanan e nipote del generale e politico Mattiyahu (Matti) Peled: del padre Rami Elhanan, cui il libro di McCann è dedicato, non si fa menzione.


La fregata è l’uccello che ha il più alto rapporto tra apertura alare e peso corporeo: il che gli consente di restare in volo per più di una settimana senza mai atterrare. Secondo quanto sostiene Colum McCann il tempo di volo si allunga fino a due mesi: due mesi di volo senza sosta, senza toccare terra.

Non sappia la tua sinistra ciò che fa la tua destra.
È probabilmente il detto del Vangelo che paesi e nazioni mettono in pratica con più rigore e continuità: con la mano destra firmano petizioni e appelli di pace, con la sinistra vendono le armi e gli esplosivi necessari per gli attentati, le guerre, i colpi di stato.
Campione non dico assoluto, ma in buona posizione nella hit parade, è stato Mitterand, che qui Colum McCann ritrae come ultimo dei Re Sole: socialista con la mano sinistra, con la destra mandava i suoi soldati ad aiutare i genocidari rwandesi ai quali riforniva armi e carburante (magari per interposta persona: questo business era affidato al figlio che ne ricavava una buona percentuale).


Soldati israeliani sulle alture del Golan alla fine della guerra del Kippur, 31 ottobre 1973 (quell’anno lo Yom Kippur capitò durante il ramadam).

Il capitolo 280 dice:
Una delle cose che Steven Spielberg capì – pur da giovane cineasta di Hollywood – è che la storia è in costante accelerazione, ma prima o poi una forza, qualsiasi forza, raggiunge inevitabilmente una curva: quella curva è a sua volta una storia che deve essere raccontata.
Evidentemente il libro di McCann ha subito la sua accelerazione e raggiunto la sua curva: perché la sua storia sta per essere raccontata. Nel migliore dei modi: la Amblin di Steven Spielberg ha comprato i diritti del libro e il progetto cinematografico è in sviluppo. Sarà un altro magistrale film come lo sono stati Schindler’s List e Munich? Io credo di sì.
McCann, che evidentemente ha buon fiuto, ritorna su Spielberg più volte. Per esempio, al capitolo 294 scrive:
Chissà, si chiese in seguito Bassam, come Spielberg avrebbe ripreso la pallottola di gomma che attraversava l’aria. Dove avrebbe piazzato la cinepresa? Come avrebbe inquadrato la…
E poi di nuovo nel 296:
È nelle prime inquadrature di Schindler’s List, che Spielberg dispiega gran parte del senso del film, quando viene accesa la fiamma della candela di Shabbat. Uno dei soli cinque momenti a colori del film: un minuscolo baluginio di luce gialla.


Una stanza del Walled Off, il boutique hotel di Banksy a un tiro di fionda dal checkpoint 300.

Quando Philippe Petit, il funambolo man-on-wire delle Twin Towers (1974), attraversò la valle di Hinnom tra la città araba e quella ebrea (1987), e liberò il classico simbolo della pace, una colomba bianca – in verità un piccione vagamente grigiastro perché non era stato possibile trovare una colomba – nel suo vestito che aveva il colore dei due popoli invertito, e cioè la gamba destra dei pantaloni recava l’azzurro d’Israele e la manica destra della casacca il bianco-nero-verde-rosso della Palestina, di modo che il gesto di pace avvenisse coinvolgendo sia arabi che ebrei – Bassam era in carcere, dove rimase sette anni (dai 17 ai 24), e imparò la lingua degli altri - Abir non era ancora nata, mentre invece Smadar aveva tre anni ed era ad assistere all’evento abbarbicata sulle spalle del padre.
Una performance intitolata “Un filo teso verso la pace”.
E allora il sottotitolo di questo libro, romanzo, saggio, reportage, collage che sia, potrebbe essere “Un rigo teso verso la pace”.


Le donne in nero mostrano i loro cartelli a forma di mano con la scritta Fermate l’Occupazione.

Mille-e-uno capitoli/cantos numerati da 1 a 500, poi il 1001, e dopo da 500 a scendere fino all’1.
Per esaltare la simmetria tra le due vicende e i due personaggi, Rami e Bassam. Mille-e-uno capitoli/cantos tra i quali è difficile indicare i più pregnanti. Qualcuno appare o traspare in quanto ho scritto qui sopra – altri vorrei citarli per non dimenticarmeli: il racconto molto tecnico dello scempio del corpo di Cristo nella crocefissione; la messa in scena di uno spettacolo musicale nel campo di sterminio di Theresienstadt; la sfrenata fantasia delle guardie di confine, la polizia, le autorità israeliane nel negare la loro responsabilità nella morte di Abir. L’adesivo sul parafango anteriore della moto di Rami che recita:
Non finirà finché non parliamo
La vendetta è la pace.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not sure yet how to frame my thoughts - but I honestly almost stopped reading completely at 13%!
Until then - I was reading this book diligently- closely - learning and FASCINATED about the migration of birds.
But then... that 13% period came. I actually felt PHYSICALLY SICK with bile in my throat. I thought I ‘was’ going to vomit. - my body reacted THAT much....

Not sure how to rate it - 5 stars in parts
3 stars in other parts ...

I’m left thinking there ARE some books best NOT read - books DEFINITELY NOT HEALTHY for some readers.
I didn’t need this story to know how FUCKING PAINFUL WAR HAS BEEN BETWEEN TWO NATIONS..

I was in Israel during the Yom Kippur War. I lived in a bomb shelter for part of it.

I have CLOSE FAMILY MEMBERS ( crazy Americans who immigrated to Israel at a time when the CITIES were at HIGH TIME DANGEROUS- when Jewish temples all over America were pulling their travel plans for the Bar and Bat Mitzvah kids - not letting them travel to their beloved country)...
Yep - I worried sick for a couple of years - for the safety of my cousins - permanently choosing to live Israel.

But...I didn’t want or need to read about ZAKA!!!
Really? Did I need to read about those GHASTLY DETAILS??? - I already knew what ZAKA does?

ZAKA — is a team of people who collect body parts for burial.
They assembled the corpses bagged them in plastic - and hand them over to the Israeli police. Isn’t that enough
information? I can figure out myself that it’s bloody - and AWFUL....
AND....
“They were meticulous. Rigorous. Precise. Special care was taken not to mix the blood of victims and the bombers”.
THIS PART IS HEARTFELT- and wonderful - and I THANK THESE PEOPLE FOR THEIR WORK....
but why McCann felt it necessary to go ‘further’ into graphics about a civilian finding an eyeball .. MY GOD.......
I angrily wanted to toss my book to the wall ( but I didn’t feel like breaking my kindle, ether).. so I suppressed my aggression.

For me..... it would’ve been enough for me to know more about the two precious little girls who are killed - One from Israel- one from Palestine —
and learn how their fathers came together -
and learning about the migration- was literally and figuratively brilliant— but parts were unnecessary and too graphic for my well being.


The acknowledgment page was very moving and important to me...though....
It wasn’t only Colum McCann’s talent - I thought about - or this story - with scenes I wished I ‘hadn’t’ read - but I sat thinking about the MANY people -from whom McCann could never acknowledged or thank enough.
The unsung heroes - community of ‘people’ who contributed facts, and inspiration to McCann are people I’d like to light a candle too.

I guess I’ll give this book 4 stars ... but I need a few days to recover. It was THAT DISTURBING for me.

So — who doesn’t need this book? - people who know war first hand.
People like myself who lived in Israel during a war .
There are reasons that some things are best not talked about to the masses.

[Beata · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grief is grief. It cannot be measured or weighted, or argued.
Two fathers, two daughters killed by the opposite side, two families shattered, and still the same grief.
'Apeirogon' was a demanding novel for me due to several reasons, the first one being that I had a general understanding of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Do I know more now? Yes, and not only about the decades of fight, but about life in that region and its history. Mr McCann provides in his unusual narration both the stories of the Elhanans and the Aranins, but also so much more. I loved all passages about the birds migration, about ordinary, daily life, about architecture etc. The names and lots of facts were mostly unknown to me, but I am happy I eventually read a book that brought me closer to understanding ideas expressed by both sides.
There are surprises ... A Palestinian studying the Holocaust ... Building mutual support by two fathers whose little daughters were the innocent victims of the conflict and who come from two sides of the conflict ... Such support is natural in many places, but Rami Elhanan and Bassam Aranin are fathers on the land which has been disputed for decades, on the land where the innocent are killed and where two sides fail to reconcile.
Personally, I found this book a challenge, however, it reads surprisingly well. I think the varied length of chapters allowed me to concentrate on the text. I admit I would like to return to this book because this is not a novel for one reading only, at least not for me. And it is also a great lesson in efforts that should be made towards understanding and peace.

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Borges said that his despair as a writer came when he was unable to translate the limitless nature of the aleph: that point in space which contained all other points. While some fell back on birds and spheres and angels, he himself was unable to find the metaphor for this timeless repository of everything. Language was successive: it could not, by its nature, be frozen in one place and therefore couldn’t catch the sheer simultaneity of all things.
Nevertheless, said Borges, he would recollect what he could."

I liked the birds, even the birds of sorrow.

[Marchpane · Rating 5 out of 5]

BOOKER PRIZE 2020 LONGLISTED

We have words but sometimes they’re not enough.

Apeirogon: a shape with a countably infinite number of sides. A book of one thousand and one parts. A story of Israel and Palestine. Of Rami, father of Smadar, killed in a bombing aged 13. Of Bassam, father of Abir, shot dead by an Israeli soldier at the age of 10. A true story.

The hero makes a friend of his enemy. That’s my duty. Don’t thank me for doing it.

McCann constructs Apeirogon both directly and obliquely, in a kind of poetic journalism that incorporates Rami and Bassam’s tales into a multifaceted, digressive piece, ranging over subjects from ornithology to art, quotations from Borges to Talking Heads. An obsession with symmetry and mathematical beauty renders the book more mosaic than collage.

Borges wrote that it only takes two facing mirrors to form a labyrinth.

Instead of chapters there are tiny fragments, 1001 of them. The mosaic is formed from these numbered pieces, running several pages, or a sentence, or a single word. Every now and then a photograph. Exactly twice: a blank space.

You never heal, don’t let anyone tell you that you ever fully heal—it’s the living who have to bury the dead.

The effect is of walking through a hushed, spacious room—part history museum, part art installation, part shrine—with 1001 tiny exhibits. You walk slowly, reverently, through, reading each title card in full, pausing a little to reflect before moving on to the next. The items are variable, but they are anything but random: a leather slingshot, a child’s report card, letters from Einstein to Freud, a military radar showing a migratory flock of birds, a Walkman containing a Sinead O’Connor cassette. Each item is carefully selected, precisely positioned, forming part of a deliberate pattern, a larger whole. It’s a marvel, not just the artefacts but the act of curating them, each one freighted with meaning. It’s almost overwhelming.

Finite words on an infinite plane.

Undoubtedly one of the best books of the year. Astoundingly good.

Sometimes it feels like we’re trying to draw water from the ocean with a spoon. But peace is a fact. A matter of time.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I apologize to the people who loved and raved about this book!
It is a first read for me by this author.
Many parts I was very taken with the writing, but the format, and the seemingly random streams of thought..I know they all connected in ways, but damn my head hurts.
I appreciated the story and the sadness of the loss these two men endured, tragically losing both their daughters.. and I also love reading about this part of the world, I just wish it had been in a regular novel type format.
A very difficult reading experience for me!

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House Publishing for the ARC!

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction

Re-read following its deserved (and predicted below) Booker longlisting.

I loved this book as much on a second read as a first - its omission from the Booker shortlist was simply to the detriment of the prize.

Once upon a time …. Rami Elhanan, a Jew, a graphic artist … father too of the late Smadar, travelled on his motorbike from the suburbs of Jerusalem to the Cremesian monastry in the mainly Christian town of Beit Jala, near Bethlehem, to meet with Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian, a Muslim . father too of the late Abir, ten years old, shot dead by an unnamed Israeli border guard in East Jerusalem, almost a decade after Rami’s daughter Smadar, two weeks away from fourteen, was killed in the western part of the city by three Palestinian suicide bombers ..

This brilliant book, surely a serious contender for the 2020 Booker Prize, is a “hybrid novel with invention at its core, a work of storytelling, which like all storytelling, weaves together elements of speculation, memory, fact and imagination”.

At its heart is the true story of Rami (and Smadar) and Bassam (and Abir)

http://withineyeofstorm.com/about-the...

One Thousand and One Nights is an explicit inspiration not just for the storytelling of the book (and the way in which that storytelling in some ways keeps the girls alive - tragically here only in memory), but for its fascinating structure. It is told in 1001 number paragraphs – firstly counting up to 500 and then back down.

The first half of the novel has as its narrative underpinning, the journey Rami takes on his motorbike to the meeting above, a meeting at which Rami and Bassam do what they do around the world – tell the stories of their daughter’s deaths, of their own mental journeys and of their plea for dialogue, understanding and peace.

Memory. Trauma. The rhyme of history and oppression. The generational shifts, The lives poisoned with narrowness. What it might mean to understand the history of another. It struck him early on that people were afraid of the enemy because they were terrified that their lives might get diluted, that they might lose themselves in the tangle of knowing each other.

The second half is underpinned by Bassam’s journey home after the meeting.

The middle part is the two lengthy, and powerful accounts, that Rami and Bassam give at the meeting – accounts which we have already largely pieced together from the first part of the book, and which are then further explored on in the second half, but which are set out here in full detail.

From the accounts and the book we get a strong sense of the kinship that Rami and Bassam have reached through their tragedies.

Amicable numbers are two different numbers related in the sense that when you add all their proper divisors together – not including the original number itself – the sums of their divisors equal each other …. As if those different things of which they are compromised can somehow recognize each other.

All of the above would make for a memorable and powerful piece of writing – however what also makes it exceptional literature is the way in which the 500 sections take elements of the stories of Rami and Bassam as a point to weave a web of connections, connections which then in turn give us a deeper understanding of their stories.

These connections draw on modern and ancient history, geography, ornithology, mathematics, language, science, politics and so much more.

Borges said to his listeners that One Thousand and One Nights could be compared to the creation of a cathedral or a beautiful mosque … Their stories had been gathered at different times, in myriad places …and from different sources …[they] existed on their own at first .. and were then joined together, strengthening one another, an endless cathedral, a widening mosque, a random everywhere

It is really hard to do justice to the book and the way in which these connections are both scattered and then gathered together – sometimes via symbolism, sometimes bringing in the terrible reality of violence, and sometimes juxtaposing the two.

But perhaps one example will give an idea.

A terrible section tells of the work of Zaka Orthodox paramedics to gather up body parts after the suicide bombing which kills Smadar – the paramedics have to return to pick up an eyeball (of one of the bombers) spotted by an elderly man – Moti Richter. The eyeball has parts of the optic nerve attached and reminds Richter we are told of a “tiny old fashioned motorcycle lamp with wires dangling”. Via discussions of eye surgery, we go to the hospital where Abir is dying and Bassam is asked if (were the worse to happen) he would consent to an eye transplant. Via rubber bullets (one of which killed Abir) we visit the death of Goliath, the mushroom effect of suicide bombers. The book explores the tightrope walk of the high wire artist Phillipe Petit (the subject of one of the author’s earlier novels) across Jerusalem, following in the path of a cable used by the Jewish forces to sneak supplies over hostile territory in the 1948 War. Moti was a guard for this cable – and at night would patrol under the cable to ensure it was still working on a motorcycle (which in turn reminds us of Rami’s journey) which had its headlight disconnected – and which sat by his bedside “with its wires dangling”.

Are these too many connections - not for this reader, and for me the concept of connection, of the constant search for commonality, of the need for unceasing dialogue - is absolutely crucial to the solution for peace that underlies the message of Rami, Bassam and this novel. The quotes above all show that.

Ultimately no connection - and the resulting increase in empathy and diminishing of enmity - can be too many. Something the book’s title (a countably infinite sided polyhedral) acknowledges.

At one point McCann discusses “The Conference of the Birds” (a story incidentally which is the second crucial inspiration for Salman Rushdie’s “Quichotte”) – a story in which a long journey seeking enlightenment ends with the birds finding only their own reflections – an analogy I think for Rami and Bassam’s realisation that only recognising something of your own reflection in “the other” will ever really bring peace, as a bumper sticker on Rami’s motorcycle says “It will not be over until we talk”

And a final example – a lengthy section discusses the journey of an Dublin born Irishman – Christopher Costigin in 1835, tracing the River Jordan from the Sea of Gaillee to the Sea of Salt (Dead Sea), a rather foolhardy and ultimately doomed attempt to explore the region. This novel, by another Dubliner, another attempt to explore and understand the land via journeys is in my view anything but a foolhardy and doomed attempt.

One final comment on the structure of the book. The page numbering (and some comments I have seen from the author) almost imply that the book could be read backwards - which given its travel underpinning of the journey to/from the talk, would mean something of a chronologically backward reading.

Actually I think that would be appropriate. One of the many points that the book makes is that to understand current day conflict you have to return to historical roots - this is as true in Israel (for example a crucial point in Bassam's journey towards peace is when he watches a holocaust film in jail and suddenly realises what drove the Jewish need for a homeland) as for the Irish conflict analogies the author (understandably given his background) frequently draws, as in this passage (imagined as George Mitchell's thoughts).

Eight hundred years of history here. Thirty-five years of oppression there. A treaty here, a massacre there, a siege elsewhere. What happened in ’68. What supermarket was torched in ’74. What happened last week on the Shankill Road. The bombings in Birmingham. The shootings in Gibraltar. The links with Libya. The Battle of the Boyne. The march of Cromwell.

Very highly recommended.

There may be books in 2020 which give an equally brilliant literary treatment to an equally powerful story and with an equally important message. If so then 2020 will be a vintage year for literature.

My thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing for an ARC via NetGalley

[Tim Null · Rating 4 out of 5]

At this point in time, I frequently write book reviews that are short, glib, and irreverent. Back when I read this particular book, I frequently attempted to hide my lack of scholarship with verbiage. More specifically, when I finished reading this particular book, I was overwhelmed with emotion, but I was uncertain how to express it in words, so I didn't write a review. I also didn't write a review because I didn't yet have the courage, wisdom, and confidence to acknowledge my great respect for all indigenous people. Additionally, as a child of colonialism, I was and remain uncertain how to express my detestation for imperialism, colonialism, and neocolonialism. I hate these things and also despise political and religious justifications for them.

I long for a world where all people can live in harmony, yet this seems impossible in a world controlled by the likes of Trump and Putin. And how does one resolve the apparent conflict between love and respect for Jewish people combined with sympathy and high regard for Palestinians.

All this was true before I read this book, after I read it, and it remains true today. Some day, I will come back and reread this book, and then perhaps I will be able to express myself with clarity. At the moment, clarity is beyond my reach, so I won't comment on the difficult issues raised by this book until I am able to sort these issues out in my own head.

Until then, I will be reading books that are new to me and listening to music that is old.

[Canadian Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Apeirogon: a shape with a countably Infinite Number of sides.

Divide two deaths you get life

This is a dense and heavy hearted story - based on truths some Imagination and historical history of 2 men who have found each other and a lifetime friendship despite one being Israeli and one being Palestinian. They have been brought together because of the common bond they share: the death of a child.
This is an enlightening piece of living in a place that is occupied; and one that occupies it. Of guns. Of death. Of hope for peace.
This story brings humanity to this part of the world that doesn’t have the luxuries we have in the western world.

The writing - amazing. McCann weaves in the most remote and obscure time pieces from music and history and magically aligns them like a beautiful tapestry.
But alas, the last 150 pages were a struggle for me to get through.
Smadar and Abir. May you never be forgotten.
4⭐️

[Esil · Rating 5 out of 5]

First 5 star read of 2020!

Perhaps not perfect, but certainly brilliant, thought provoking, emotionally charged and timely.

Apeirogon is not a linear narrative. Told in 1000 short segments, it tells the story of two men who have lost daughters to violence — one is Israeli and the other is Palestinian. This is based on a true story. Rami and Bassam are joined together in their grief and through the united project of finding a road to peace. The fragments of McCann’s brilliant narrative go back and forth in time, zeroing in on different parts of these characters’ lives and families, weaving in scraps of history, politics and nature and seemingly random anecdotes and thoughts.

I can’t really do justice to the power of this book through my review. As I read some parts — especially those dealing with Rami and Bassam’s grief and their paths forward — I found myself holding my breath in awe.

What was not perfect? At times, I found myself losing focus — this is a long book with many tangents. But this is a minor flaw.

This won’t be for everyone. It’s not a straightforward narrative and it’s infused with a political message. But it really turned my crank.

I think I’ve given a five star rating to every one of McCann’s books I’ve read. He takes huge chances with big payoffs. He writes like an angel — deceptive simplicity.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.

[Hugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2020
Another book that would have made the shortlist in a saner world.

I will start with a disclosure - the edition I read was an uncorrected proof courtesy of my friends at Five Leaves bookshop. Gumble's Yard and Neil have already written excellent detailed reviews so I will try to keep this one short.

This is a book that fully deserves the hype - McCann has dared to write this collage of fact and fiction that challenges all sides in the conflict in Palestine to explore their common humanity.

The book is written in 1001 sections, counting from 1 to 500, 1001 and down from 500 to 1 again, varying from a few pages down to a single line or picture. Its central characters Rami Elhanan and Bassam Aramin are both real, one Israeli and one Palestinian. Both have lost young daughters to the conflict and both are campaigning against the odds to work for peace and understanding.

Alongside these human stories are many other elements, some historical and cultural, some mathematical, some more descriptive of the landscape and wildlife, notably the migrating birds that cross Palestine. These coalesce surprisingly well, and the whole is very readable. Highly recommended.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF at 40%. I tried, I tried more than once, starting over each time. Maybe it is that right now my mind is so scattered that the scattered presentation if this book, made it frustrating. I usually love this author and I understand what he was trying to do with this book, but I finally have thrown in the towel. The repetition, the back and forth narrative, did me in.

[Susan Abulhawa · Rating 1 out of 5]

My published review: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/20...


Apeirogon: Another colonialist misstep in commercial publishing

Colum McCann’s latest novel mystifies the colonisation of Palestine as a ‘complicated conflict’ between two equal sides.

11 Mar 2020


Hollywood director Steven Spielberg recently bought the film rights to a novel about “Israel Palestine” before it was published, something that may take us to a cultural moment of unfortunate deja vu.

In the mid-1950s, powerful Hollywood executives financed the writing of a novel by Leon Uris to sell a pro-Israel agenda to Western popular imagination.

The result was Exodus, a bestseller turned blockbuster film. It narrated a true event (a ship carrying Jewish refugees sailing to Palestine) as the seed of an elaborate myth – a land without a people for a people without a land – which functioned to obscure the indigenous stewards of the land.

It was the romantic happy ending Europe needed following the genocide of its own Jewish citizenry. People lapped it up by the millions and refused to accept that it was anything but absolute truth, with Biblical authority to boot.

But it was – as everyone now knows – a lie.

Palestine already had an ancient, extensive society, and when European Zionists descended on their country, committing well-documented massacres and pogroms to expel them, Palestinians pleaded to the world for help – to no avail. Only when we organised into armed guerillas and hijacked planes was the world finally forced to reckon with our existence.

No longer able to hold the claim that Palestine was ever without her people, Zionists shifted the narrative – through countless films, books, ads – to one that caricatured Palestinians as two-dimensional, irrational Arab terrorists, depictions that still persist in popular media.

Then came the internet, and social media made the world smaller. Suddenly, the masses had access to videos, photos, eyewitness accounts, independent media, human rights audits, and UN reports that laid bare Israel’s sadistic oppression of Palestinians.

‘It’s complicated’ and other shifting myths

Israel has floundered over the past two decades, trying to sort out a strategy to deal with this popular unveiling of its colonial rot. It has become harder to obscure Palestinian humanity.

Israel has signed an agreement with Facebook and collaborated with other major social media companies to censor Palestinian pages; it has smeared Israel’s critics as anti-Semites, destroying careers and worse; it has set up a “Lawfare Project” to drag students and activists through courts; and it has successfully pushed legislation around the world to criminalise criticism of Israel.

On the cultural front, Israel has been deploying public relations campaigns, as their supporters saturate public conversations with sound bites, like, “it’s complicated” – a “conflict” that “has been going on for thousands of years”.

Alas, we are fed the discourse of “two sides”, as if the destruction of a defenceless indigenous society is a matter of two equal parties who simply do not understand each other, but who just need a little nudging – some dialogue maybe – to love each other and viola! Kumbaya, my Lord.

And yet, none of these extensive efforts have dampened the swelling tide of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, a global popular resistance movement that has engaged millions of people around the world fed up with Israel’s extraordinary impunity and ongoing colonisation of Palestine.

In short, nothing has come close to duplicating the spectacular advertising feat of Exodus. Until, perhaps, now.

Apeirogon

Enter Apeirogon.

Apeirogon is a geometric shape with an infinite number of countable sides. It is also the title of Colum McCann’s latest novel, a kind of infinite boost to Israel’s “two sides” discourse.

The novel is more of a biography than fiction. It is based on the real-life story of a friendship between a Palestinian and an Israeli – Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian whose daughter, Abir, was shot in the head by an Israeli soldier in 2007 and Rami Elhanan, an Israeli whose daughter, Smadar, was killed in a suicide bombing in 1997.

Its central message is about the power of empathy, and both men are fully supportive of the book. I spoke with Bassam Aramin, who informed me the three of them will go on tour together. But like Exodus, it tells a true story to sell a much bigger lie.

Colonisers and native

Imagine this (to borrow from McCann’s writing style): Somewhere on the Pine Ridge Reservation, a little girl from the Oglala Lakota Nation, whose head was shattered by a white settler’s petulant son, bleeds to death in her father’s helpless arms. Another white settler befriends the Native girl’s father (it has to be at the white man’s behest because the father can’t leave the reservation), and a friendship between the two men flourishes from their common anguish of having lost a child. The white man’s daughter had been killed by a group of young Braves who attacked an encroaching settlement. The friendship between the two men is real. The loss that haunts them for all their days is the same.

Along comes a novelist, who is so moved by this unusual friendship, the story behind it, and what he feels it represents of hope for the future of the nation that he decides to write a book about them. It is a kind of amplifying-the-voice-of-peace endeavour, born from the stubborn belief that anything can be solved by the benevolent enthusiasm of well-meaning folks.

The writer does not try to gloss over the horrors inflicted on Native bodies. In fact, he presents a true face of colonial gore and trauma. But here’s the trick: He presents the violence of a local native rebellion equally, and describes the insecurity and fear that white settlers must tragically endure as a result of Indigenous resistance to their settlements.

There is an implicit parity, you see? All fear is the same, all violence is the same, all insecurity is the same. The Oglala Sioux father tells the writer how he was able to see white humanity for the first time through this friendship. The white man tells him the same about Indigenous humanity.

And just like that, the genocidal engine of American colonialism, which, together with slavery, propelled its entire economy, becomes just a big misunderstanding, a problem to be solved by dialogue, empathy, and the simple understanding that, as McCann quotes his Palestinian protagonist’s epiphany: “They have families, too.”

Substitute Palestinian for Oglala Lakota, Palestine for Pine Ridge Reservation, and Israelis for white settlers (although that does not need changing), and you have, in a nutshell, Colum McCann’s much-touted, highly anticipated novel, which may well become a blockbuster film.

I want to be clear that I am not comparing or equating forms or instances of injustice. I am trying to make the point – using an understood (in hindsight) historic horror – that it is the height of mendacity to suggest that the stories of individual relationships in circumstances of enormous power disparities are anything but normalisation sideshows, and certainly not a challenge to the machinations undergirding structural oppression.

One can also analogise to Apartheid South Africa in a Bantustan, or Belgium in Congo, or Nazi Germany in the Warsaw ghetto, or the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi. After all, members of those hideous institutions had families, too, didn’t they?

Exodus 2.0

Apeirogon is potentially Exodus 2.0 – retooled, rebooted, and adjusted for increasing public awareness of Palestinian suffering under the yoke of unrelenting Israeli terror.

I asked Bassam if he read it. “I tried, but it was too painful,” he said. I can see why, because McCann stretches the details of the killings of two little girls, spreading little bits here and there over hundreds of pages, adding a new detail with each repetition, until one is not so startled by what was agonising to read the first several times. It is an interesting way to convey the normalisation of violence, if that is what McCann intended.

Interspersed in the story are disparate bits of information stitched together – from bird migration patterns and ancient kings, to the Sistine Chapel and explosives – in a kind of forced profundity that aims to tie together all things everywhere and anytime, all of it, somehow, relating to “Israel Palestine”.

In other words, “it’s all so very, very complicated.”

Take, for example, the idea that the core of Fat Man, the nuclear bomb used by the US to exterminate everything that moved, swayed, hopped, flew, or breathed in the city of Nagasaki, was “the size of a throwable rock” (presumably in the hands of a Palestinian kid).

The compelling centre of every parent’s worst fear is threaded through this dizzying kaleidoscope of world trivia. I would have loved the latter, were it not functioning as linguistic smoke and mirrors, blurring what is truly the simplest, oldest story in human history: A powerful group of people stole a land, colonised it, and are going about obliterating its indigenous people.

The Hula wetlands

McCann devotes extensive space in the text to birds – their individual species, migration patterns, and ornithological audits. But nowhere does he mention that around the time Leon Uris was writing Exodus, Israel was draining the Hula wetlands, which they called a “malaria swamp”. The project was touted as Zionist ingenuity. Jewish Europeans declared they were “healing the land”, which, they said, had been left to fester by backward Arabs.

In reality, these new European settlers destroyed a vast regional biodiversity treasure, which had been a major feeding station for hundreds of millions of migrating birds. It is estimated that over 100 animal species disappeared from the area or became extinct.

This episode in Zionist history is probably the best analogy for McCann’s book: An ambitious project to “heal”, conceived by foreigners, ignorant of the local terrain, its history and ecology; eager to solve, civilise, and lay claim; well-intended; sure of their own glory; but in reality, profoundly harmful – irreparably so for the most vulnerable lives.

Reinforcing the notion of a “complicated conflict” of “two sides”, the book recounts a scene where a gun-wielding Israeli soldier zip-ties, curses at and beats an unarmed Bassam Aramin, whose hands are up in surrender, a pink stain on his palm. Hours later, after the soldier realises the pink stain was from Bassam’s murdered daughter’s candy bracelet, not from an explosive, she’s really sorry. Who can blame the plantation mistress if she’s rightfully a little fearful of dark people with stained palms? As if beating Palestinians at checkpoints isn’t routine, or as if Israeli snipers don’t murder us for sport, cheering when they get a good “clip.”

The reader is told several times that Rami Elhanan Gold is from an “old” family, a “seventh-generation Jerusalemite.” But we are not told what this means.

First, Rami is one of a tiny minority of Jewish Israelis who can actually trace their lineage in the land before World War II. Second, he is part of an even smaller minority whose ancestry in Palestine goes back before World War I. Third, Rami’s ancestors, like all “People of the Book” (those of monotheistic religions) had been welcomed in Palestine and protected under Muslim rule, which lasted over 1,200 years.

Fourth, none of that stopped Rami or his parents from taking up arms against their non-Jewish neighbours when Zionism promised to give them power and property. What treachery.

The stories McCann chooses not to tell are, well, telling.

For the record, I am at least a 22nd-generation Jerusalemite. Israel kicked me out of my homeland when I was 13. For being an “illegal”.

No measure of understanding that Israelis “have families too” will ever compel me to accept forced exile.

Such inconvenient truths, or inconvenient people, have no place in the reductionist colonial narratives of empathy and dialogue.

Who gets to narrate

For years, Spielberg and his family have fundraised for and supported Israel and its occupation of Palestine. That he plans to take this book to the big screen is wholly consistent with his declaration that he would die for Israel.

I do not understand why McCann sold the option to him. My fear is that, just as privileged white men used Exodus to sell a colonial fabrication in 1958, a new set of privileged white men in Hollywood will use Apeirogon to sell a contemporary cultural instalment of colonial mendacity.

I do not know McCann, though I suspect he wrote this book with a sense of solidarity and a desire to foster “dialogue”. But it is possible to do great harm with the noblest of intentions. The rhetoric of dialogue can be alluring – the idea that talking to find common humanity is all it takes to dismantle structural racism and notions of ethnocentric supremacy. It can make all kinds of people, even victims themselves, become purveyors of injustice.

Dialogue and negotiations – as Palestinians know well after nearly 30 years of doing exactly that – always works in favour of the powerful.

It is clear McCann did extensive research, including long conversations with the main personalities in this book, and perhaps by presenting a true story, he tried to navigate the ethical issues surrounding appropriation. But there is an overarching colonial message of parity that lends itself to Zionist propaganda. It’s like Jared Kushner reading 25 books and thinking that qualified him to make the “deal of the century,” a “solution” to please “all sides” of “the conflict”.

[Chrissie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I personally do not like this book, so I am giving it one star. This is upsetting to me. In the past I have always relied on good books from Colum McCann.

The story circles around two men, two fathers, Bassam Aramin (a Muslim Arab) and Rami Elhanan (a seventh generation Israeli Jew). Each has lost a daughter to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Bassam lost his ten-year-old Abir to a rubber bullet fired by an Israeli soldier shooting from the back of a jeep. Rami lost his thirteen-year-old Smadar to a suicide bombing on Ben Yehuda Street during the Second Intifada.

Bassam and Rami eventually meet at a group for grieving parents composed of both Arabs and Israelis. They become close friends. By the end of book, the men’s past lives have been revealed, as well as the details of the children’s deaths and the progression through shock, grief, anger, a quest for revenge and retaliation and finally, to a sort of peace.

In the author's note, at the beginning of the book, McCann makes clear that the characters in this story are real. They do exist. Their names and those of their children, wives and parents have not been altered, nor the name of the anti -Occupation organization in which they are both active members and speakers. What Bassam and Rami have said and done has been well documented in the media. The author goes on to explain the following:

“The transcripts of both men in the centre section of the book are pulled together from a series of interviews in Jerusalem, New York, Jericho and Beit Jala, but elsewhere in the book Bassam and Rami have allowed me to shape and reshape their words and worlds.”

“Despite these liberties, I hope to remain true to the actual realities of their shared experiences.”

Before and then again after the middle section of the book, are five hundred short, short chapters. The first are numbered consecutively one to five hundred. This is followed by the middle section, which is then followed by another five hundred chapters. The latter five hundred, start at four hundred ninety nine and go steadily down to one.

The one thousand chapters are short, from a word or two to at the most a couple of paragraphs.

Between the jumbled presentation of information about Bassam and Rami and their two respective families are sprinkled random facts--on birds and bird migration, Argentinian author Jorg Luis Borges, Arab leader Yasser Arafat, letters between Einstein and Freud, French daredevil acrobat Philippe Petit, sandhogs, the origin of the term “mayday”, the making of gunpowder, falconry ,M16 rifles, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. These are just examples, a complete list of the wide variety of topics covered would go on too long.

It is up to the reader to draw the connection between topics and guess at why the information is inserted. Sometimes the train of thought continues from one chapter to the next. Other times, a completely different topic is broached. Often one wonders what the connection could possibly be! One hops, without rhyme or reason, backwards and forwards in time and between different places and people. The reading experience is disjointed. Presented in this fashion the information becomes unnecessarily confusing. The author gives long strings of words, lists. What is presented is a kind of poetry, but unfortunately the artistry of writing takes precedence over clarity.

Words and exact phrases are repeated:
“I am sorry to tell you this, senator, but you murdered my daughter.”
and
“This is the world’s most expensive candy.”
are two examples of lines repeated umpteen times. If a turn of phrase is spectacular, it need not be repeated; it should shine first time around.

In any case, what is important to note is that the book can scarcely be classified as a book of fiction. Nor does it read as a book of historical fiction. It consists of facts piled up on facts in a haphazard fashion.

I do not like how the book is put together.

One might state that information is dumped on the reader. If you have read the author’s other books you will recognize that he repeats information from them. In This Side of Brightness the author wrote about sandhogs, the immigrants digging the train tunnel beneath the East River between Brooklyn and Manhattan. In Let the Great World Spin, the whole book was about the acrobat artist Philippe Petit who in August 1974 performed his high-wire walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Center of New York City. The information on Philippe Petit and sandhogs is repeated in Apeirogon.

McCann does have the ability to express himself well, but sometimes he overdoes it.

“When you divide death by life you find a circle.”

While this sounds very deep and intelligent and wise, tell me, please, what does this actually mean? His writing is sometimes too clever, at times too obtuse.

Now I am getting around to what really irritates me. The writing is meant to move the reader. Clearly the author intends to upset his readers. Portions border on the graphic. In cold, precise words we are informed that a civilian has found an eyeball left on the street. A squad comes into to collect it. The author uses his words to manipulate us. This is how it felt to me and I dislike this immensely.

The book speaks out against the Israeli Occupation. It does this through emotions, not through facts. I find this underhand. Although I fully agree with the standpoint taken against the Occupation, it doesn’t fairly tackle all sides of the Israeli Palestinian dispute. Here, it does not give adequate historical detail.

I dislike the sensational tone of the writing.

The audiobook is narrated by the author. I have given his narration two stars because it is OK. I could hear the words. The author’s Irish accent is too prominent, and his speed varies too much. All too often factual information is zipped through too quickly, while lines of drama are spoken slowly for effect.

In the second half of the book, as the chapter count descends from four hundred and ninety nine to one, I was filled with relief each time I saw I was approaching one, the end of this long, drawn-out, repetitive, pretentious, jumbled and unnecessarily confusing, telling of two men’s lives. Counting the chapters as one reaches the end of a book is NOT a good sign.


*********************************.
Thoughts while reading:
This is so VERY hard to read..................It is disjointed and it is repetitive and McCann has accumulated snippets from earlier books and it is gruelingly upsetting!!!!!!!!! Phew, difficult to go on.

A day later--information is not presented in a manner conductive to learning. Shock value and pretty, poetic language seem to me to be valued over clarity. I have just spent 15 minutes trying to make sense of shocking information presented in three short lines, one after the other, but not in chronological order. Information presented in a confusing fashion is annoying to me. I am trying very hard not to lose my temper.

********************

*Songdogs 5 stars
*Dancer 5 stars
*Let the Great World Spin 5 stars
*TransAtlantic 5 stars
*This Side of Brightness 4 stars
*Zoli 4 stars
*Everything in This Country Must 4 stars
*Thirteen Ways of Looking 3 stars
*Fishing the Sloe-Black River 2 stars
*Apeirogon 1 star

[Neale · Rating 5 out of 5]

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 BOOKER PRIZE

The last sentence of the fist chapter says it all. “Geography here is everything”. Geography here in this part of the world can get you killed. If you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, if you are in a zone where restrictions say you cannot go. Even by accident, yes, geography can get you killed.

There are signs everywhere to help prevent this happening. Signs that are expected in some way to reduce the killings. Surely, it’s as simple as sticking to your designated areas. Do not cross the line, do not threaten the peace.

Five hundred million birds arc the sky over the hills of Beit Jala every year. It almost seems they are mocking the people far below. Nothing restricts them, they migrate and fly where they must. If they are killed it will be by some accident, or maybe a predator. The one thing it will not be from, is from hate. Hate is reserved for us. Why are these people not allowed in this zone? Because we hate them? Why do you hate them? Because we have always hated them?

This is the story of two men, one an Israeli, Rami Elhanan, and one a Palestinian, Bassam Aramin.
This novel is about the conflict between two different peoples, two different cultures, two different religions, and the realisation, that in truth, there is no difference. Why does this conflict rage on, and the innocent suffer?

Both men’s lives are shattered, irrevocably changed, when they lose a child. Bassam loses his beloved Abir when she, at the age of ten is hit in the back of the head by an Israeli rubber bullet, a form of ammunition that is supposed to be non-fatal. Rami lost his thirteen-year-old daughter, Smadar, killed by suicide bombers.

Ten-year-old Abir,

“Abir. From the ancient Arabic. The perfume. The fragrance of the flower”.

Thirteen-year-old Smadar,

“From the Song of Solomon. The grapevine. The opening of the flower.”

Two different cultures, two different religions, two different peoples, two innocent lives lost forever. Two men living with the same one irreplaceable loss.

In this part of the world, things like this happen every day, but this knowledge is no help to the men. There is nothing that can be said or done to assuage the men’s grief. The culprit, the source of the pain, the interminable, indelible hatred between the two cultures. The oppression of one over the other.

McCann assails the reader with vast amounts of military information which he uses in contrast, juxtaposing theses passages amongst the narrative of the lives of the characters. It works well, emphasizing the normalcy of everyday life against these weapons and the destruction they disperse.

There is no linear narrative, and there are no chapters. The novel is broken into small portions or paragraphs which all have something to do with the narrative, even if infinitesimally tiny. McCann keeps returning to the scenes of the young girl’s deaths, replaying them in the readers head until they dominate your thoughts, and the complete senseless tragedy of their deaths hits you. We read of their loves, their passions, their skills. Futures that a rubber bullet and a bomb erased. And yet these weapons are just objects. They have no emotion, feel no hatred.

McCann also writes of the propaganda and misconception printed and reported by both sides. Both sides will use false information to justify their actions. Misconception and falsehoods that just lead to more violence, which again, leads to false reports and innuendo. It is a vicious circle, a snake eating its own tail.

The genius of McCann’s writing can be found in paragraphs like this,

“When, in 2009, Mitchell was appointed as special envoy to the Middle East, he had a sudden feeling that he was walking into the middle of another smashed jigsaw -PLO, JDL, DFLP, LEHI, PFLP, ALA, PIJ, CPT, IWPS, ICASH, AIC, AATW, EIJ, JTJ, ISM, AEI, NIF, ACRI, RHR, BDS, PACBI, BNC – only this time it is so much more difficult to find a straight edge with which to begin”.

My review cannot do justice to what McCann has achieved with this novel. It’s a masterpiece.

There is a particular passage from the novel which has stayed with me in which Phillipe Petit walks across a tightrope. He has purchased a pigeon which was meant to be a dove, but he could not find one, and he releases it halfway across the tightrope. Instead of the pigeon flying away, it lands on his head pecking him, then leaps onto his balance bar threatening a lethal fall. There was a festival for this walk, and it was called the “Bridge of Peace”. Is McCann using this passage to represent the peace process in the Middle East and the difficulty of its sustainability? I think he is. The wire is also on an incline. The steep road of the peace process perhaps? Petit, had no safety net, and despite the pigeon, despite the fear, he made it. 5 Stars!!!

There is a wonderful interview with Colum on youtube talking about Apeirogon. Both Bassam and Rami are present. It is really worth watching, link here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KDGK...

[Roman Clodia · Rating 5 out of 5]

What could cause someone to be that angry, that mad, that desperate, that hopeless, that stupid, that pathetic, that he is willing to blow himself up alongside a girl, not even fourteen years old? How can you possibly understand that instinct? To tear his own body apart? To walk down a busy street and pull the cord on a belt that rips him asunder? How can he think that way? What made him? Where in the world was he created? How did he get that way? Where did he come from? Who taught him this? Did I teach him this? Did his government teach him this? Did my government?

A devastating, complicated, compassionate and great-hearted book that got under my skin, made me think and feel, which choked me up and yet left me feeling that there is hope even if it's unending grief which creates a community of humanity between people forced onto different sides.

There's nothing sentimental about McCann's writing, and it allows space and dignity for a multitude of voices. The 1001 sections pay homage to acts of storytelling and also keep the forward momentum even as the narrative circles, repeats, expands and contracts. At the heart of this structure, at points 500, are two extended stories from the two fathers, one Israeli, the other Palestinian, both grieving a lost child. And here, again, we find complexities embraced rather than smoothed out: both had formerly celebrated atrocities against the other; both find they share more than divides them.

Mixing seamlessly between fact and imagination, McCann makes connections at both the granular level (the bracelet of candy bought by Abir and prayer beads) and more widely: the presence of Irish history is a shadowy background of another occupation with go/no-go areas, military checkpoints, rubber bullets, active resistance and hunger strikes, as well as a symbol of hope and regeneration springing from the chaos of history.

I don't want to say more about the stories as each reader deserves to read them fresh for themselves, so I'll just say that this is an extraordinary piece of writing, sure to be one of the literary highlights of the year. In the midst of our toxic politics, the re-emergence of legitimized hatred, not least from our statesmen, this quietly and without fanfare or pyrotechnics speaks to commonality and common humanity: 'we are Semitic, both of us, Israelis and Palestinians together... it was one Israeli soldier who shot my daughter, but one hundred former Israeli soldiers came to Anata to build a playground for her'.

Many thanks to Bloomsbury for an ARC via NetGalley.

[Paige · Rating 5 out of 5]

"They seemed the most unlikely of friends, even beyond the obvious, one being Israeli, the other Palestinian."

Rami and Bassam's story is humbling. Centered around the Israeli-Palestine conflict, Rami and Bassam relive the day that each of their daughters died at the hands of a oppressive barrier that has effected more than just a perimeter. After each lose a daughter to violence, they learn to find solace in their grief and overcome the boundaries defined by their government.

"...everyone knew at least one child who was killed, and most of us knew several. You get used to it, sometimes you think it's normal."

It is a somber read with graphic gory scenes from beginning to end. Rami and Bassam's recollections and revelations were heartbreaking. Just when I thought my heart couldn't break anymore, it did. But the power and value behind the words is undeniable.
(The speeches they gave on pages 217-240 were unequivocal and would provide great dialogue for panel discussions and Socratic Seminars.)

There are only sections; most sections are about a paragraph in length, some sections are one sentence, some might be a small photo, though other sections are the length of a regular chapter. With a total of 1,001 sections, there are no chapters or parts.

It is a blend of fiction and nonfiction. For example: the story will be describing the anniversary of the time of deaths for the girls, so the very next section then discusses how the Greeks measured time in antiquity. Or, another example: there is a flashback when Salwa and her daughter are watching Arabian horses, so the next section goes into facts about Arabian horses. The fiction and nonfiction weave back and forth relying on each other. It jigsaws, using the previous section to build on the next section. The sequence is ornamental but blends cohesively.

I loved the book. It changed the way I think. When I wasn't reading it, I was thinking about it. It had a profound impact on me. I enjoyed learning through their story.

“Truth is, you can’t have a humane occupation. It just doesn’t exist. It can’t. It’s about control.”

I won an advance reader's edition in a Goodread's Giveaway. Thank you Random House!

Read The Guardian's Review for Apeirogon.

[Cheri · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 Stars

Apeirogon — a shape with a countably infinite number of sides — shares the stories of those living through the conflict between Palestine and Israel, through two families whose outlooks and lives were changed when the lives of their two daughters were taken on what began as ordinary days, and ended with two families grieving their loss. The journey that brought them together through their grieving was not an immediate one, or an easy one, but a worthwhile one in the end. Through sharing their stories of the loss of their daughters, they were more able to see these infinite sides to each other’s story, which led to understanding, and a friendship.

Based on the lives of real people, Rami Elhanan who is Israeli and his daughter, Smadar, and Bassam Aramin who is Palestinian and his daughter, Abir. Abir was ten years old when a rubber bullet ended her life, Smadar was thirteen. While the feelings of the mothers of Smadar and Abir are shared, the focus is on their fathers, how they met, and how they helped each other find some degree of peace.

The format of this story is somewhat unconventional; it flits back and forth through time as different memories are recalled in one thousand segments that vary in length. Several range from being as short as three words to a sentence or two, one segment has no words, and others are more conventionally chapter length – if short chapters. Some include photographs or quotes from notable figures – some political, others offer varying perspectives. These segments begin at one, go to five hundred, and then back down to one, offering a more encompassing view of the ways these lives were personally affected, their journeys to a beginning of a sense of personal peace, and a broader view of both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A heartbreaking story about love, loss, conflict and life, with a heartfelt plea for peace.


Published: 25 Feb 2020

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Random House Group – Random House

[But_i_thought_ · Rating 5 out of 5]

According to the philosopher Martin Buber there are two kinds of relationships— I-It and I-Thou. I-It relationships are those where we miss the essential humanity of the other person. We assess them. We label them. I-Thou relationships, by contrast, are infused with empathy, devoid of judgment, qualification or objectification. I meet you as you are, you meet me as I am. We leave our baggage at the door. The possibilities emerging from the latter — a relationship unmediated by an intervening system of ideas — is what this novel aims to explore.

Structurally, the book resembles the aftermath of an explosion. We get 1001 chapters — fragments, really — in non-linear, aleatoric ordering. Some examine the intricacies of avian migratory flight, the globalized weapons trade, the beauty of Persian poetry, the genesis of drone technology, the implications of sacred geometry. Others look at the helixes of music and time, the limitations of language, the echoes of trauma, the crimes of geography, the borders of sound. Each fragment is methodically linked with another, creating a geometric shape (an apeirogon) with an infinite number of facets.

The pulsing, nuclear core of the novel is found in the stories of Bassam Aramin and Rami Elhanan — two extraordinary, non-fictional characters (one Palestinian, one Israeli) who lose their daughters to conflict and use the force of their grief as a weapon for change. Their stories are well documented in film and print, and the author enlisted their feedback and collaboration in the shaping of the narrative.

Though the book does not flinch from depicting the horrors of living under Israeli occupation, it is not, as some might expect, a political rallying cry. It is neither instructive nor self-righteous. We won’t find here a playbook for resolving regional conflicts. Instead, it takes a far wider gaze — one that is mystical, inquisitive, nuanced, curious. One could describe it as a meditation. A riddle. An exercise in violent empathy. The disaster of discovering the humanity and nobility of your enemy. The annihilation of the idea of being in the “right” side. As Rumi, the Sufi poet urges, “Beyond right and wrong there is a field, I’ll meet you there.” This is the space the book holds for its reader.

My rating: 10/10
Mood: Mystical, meditative, inquisitive

Also on Instagram.

Soundtrack to the novel (musical pieces referenced)

Talking Heads: Once in a Lifetime (chapter 88)
Sinead O Connor: Nothing Compares to You (chapter 149)
Verdi: Requiem (chapter 464)
John Cage: 4’33 (chapter 389)
Olivier Messiaen: Catalogue d’Oiseaux (chapter 283)
John Cage: As Slow as Possible (chapter 169)
Philip Glass: Einstein on the Beach (chapter 123)
Victor Ullmann: The Emperor of Atlantis (chapter 12)

[PattyMacDotComma · Rating 5 out of 5]

5★ updated links and some info November 2023)

“Apeirogon: a shape with a countably infinite number of sides.
. . .
Bassam and Rami gradually came to understand that they would use the force of their grief as a weapon.”

If there are too many sides to count, how would you know which one is yours and which one is ‘opposite’? If you choose and decide, what will you do about it?

Two fathers, one Palestinian, one Israeli, each lost young daughters in the conflict in the Middle East.

“My name is Rami Elhanan. I am the father of Smadar. I am a sixty-seven- year- old graphic designer, an Israeli, a Jew, a seventh- generation Jerusalemite. Also what you might call a graduate of the Holocaust.”

Smadar was killed in a suicide bombing in Jerusalem in 1997. She was shopping for books. She was 13 years old.

“Language was the sharpest weapon. It was a mighty thing. He wanted to wield it. He needed to be careful. My name is Bassam Aramin. I am the father of Abir. Everything else rose out of that.”

Abir was born that year and was killed by a rubber bullet in 2007. She was coming out of a shop with sweets. She was ten years old.

The true story of Bassam and Rami and their daughters has been well documented, but I doubt there is anything that begins to describe it as well as this account. McCann has taken interviews and transcripts to weave together the personal, the politics, and the history of the families and the conflict. He has used a design loosely based on the famous Thousand and One Nights, Or Tales of the Arabian nights, which was a favourite book of Smadar’s, an Israeli.

Chapters are sometimes only a few words or a paragraph, or several pages long. Occasionally, there is only a photograph or illustration.

Chapters 69 and 70

They are numbered from 1-500, with a mix of events and stories, flashbacks and history. When we get to number 500, we jump to Chapter 1001 where we find a single, page-long sentence about stories and connections and listeners around the world, beginning:

“Once upon a time, and not so long ago, and not so far away . . .”

and ending with:

“. . .our memories imploding, our synapses skipping, in the gathering dark, remembering, while listening, all of those stories that are yet to be told.”

I think perhaps he’s reminding us that we are still creating stories, those yet to be told, and maybe suggesting we be careful what stories we tell.

After chapter 1001, the numbering works its way back from 500-1. The original Arabian Nights was said to comprise the stories that Shahrazad (or Scheherazade) told each night to delay her execution by the king. She apparently ended each night with only part of a new story told, so the king would keep her alive to finish it the following night. The original cliffhanger?

The chapters continue to explain how the men connected and how they came to work together. Stories matter. Bassam began to study the Holocaust, working on a master’s thesis titled ‘The Holocaust: The Use and Abuse of History and Memory’.

Bassam said he used the force of his grief to speak to people. People were confused, especially when he was in England, studying.

“No one knew quite where he stood on the issues. He talked around corners. It was part of his talent. He quoted poems. He seemed to wear them as concealment. A rhyme to cover the wounds. ‘A pessimist of the intellect, an optimist of the will. What is closer to my heart, a soldier from my country or one of my enemy’s poets?’ So many times people would come up to him after his lectures and say that they wished there were more like him. What do you mean? he would ask.”

I think people expect everyone to take sides. Are you left or right, east or west, north or south, up or down, black or white? Of course, we are all many-sided and overlap with everyone else. I’m not sure how many sides of an apeirogon I would find myself on, but I know I would keep slipping from one to another. I like to think that I don’t lack commitment so much as I’d rather have understanding.

The quotation McCann gives in the beginning says it better.
“We live our lives, suggested Rilke, in widening circles that reach out across the entire expanse.”

I don't know if Combatants for Peace is still going in the same form, but this was on their original website.

“Combatants for Peace is a grassroots movement of Israelis and Palestinians, working together to end the occupation and bring peace, freedom and dignity to both peoples. It is the only organization worldwide that was founded by former fighters on both sides of an active conflict. The movement began in 2005 and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 & 2018.”

There is a wonderful article about the two men here. I hope you can read it.
https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life...

The Parents Circle has a lot of information.
https://www.theparentscircle.org/en/p...

This page is about support in the US.
https://parentscirclefriends.org/media/

This book is written simply and presented in an format that is easy to read. It should be required reading so we’d all learn more about ‘sides’.

My hope (and theirs, I assume) is that story by story, day by day, we can delay, put off, prevent violence.

Longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, but I think it should have made at least the Short List!

(Links updated November 2023 during the current dreadful violence)

See and hear them in October 2023 here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd8uO...

[Alex.andthebooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

To było…. Trudne. Ciężkie. Ale i piękne. Uświadomiło wiele na temat cierpienia - nieważne w jakiego boga wierzysz, jakie zasady wyznajesz. Ono jest zawsze takie samo.

[Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

He had discovered that the secret to the structure was that the thousands of parts were not hung on a framework at all, but were harmoniously integrated.

This was my second time through Apeirogon and a re-read has only increased my appreciation for the book. It is a mystery to me how this did not make its way onto the Booker shortlist (that could be said about a number of books, but particularly this one from my perspective).

In my first reading, I pictured the book as a huge number of dots on a page with McCann gradually building connections between them. Sometimes he would concentrate on one area of the page for a while and fill in several connections. Sometimes he would jump around on the page making just one or two connections before moving on.

In this second reading, the quote I've put at the top seemed very relevant to the structure of the book, but the overriding image in my mind was of multiple threads being woven into a rope. I pictured McCann looking at one loose thread and following it towards where it merged with the rest of the rope. Sometimes he would follow a loose thread all the way to the centre. Sometimes, something would remind him of another thread and he would move over to that one for a while. Gradually, he tracks all the threads to the core story.

I think this time through I appreciated more of the poetry in the book, the way one segment echoes another either by picking up a theme or by contrasting (for example, 136 ends "The Spike missiles were of a type known as fire-and-forget" and 137 starts Even as a child, Abir showed an amazing gift for memorisation.).

ORIGINAL REVIEW

From the acknowledgements:

”This is a hybrid novel with invention at its core, a work of storytelling which, like all storytelling, weaves together elements of speculation, memory, fact, and imagination…”

There is a core story being told in Apeirogon. On 4 September 1997, Smadar Elhanan was killed by a suicide bomber in Jerusalem. On 16 January 2007, Abir Aramin was leaving school with friends in Anata when she was hit in the head by a rubber bullet. She died in hospital. The fathers of these two girls, Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian, and Rami Elhanan, an Israeli, became friends and joined forces to work for peace in one of the world’s most troubled places.

So much is known fact:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theg...

Apeirogon is the story of these two men. In part of the story, we follow the men almost chronologically through a day, but this is mixed with a multitude of flashbacks that fill in the details for the reader jumping around in time. We revisit some events numerous times, adding details and fresh perspectives as we go. It feels like McCann has hit the story with a hammer and carefully picked up the small pieces (there are multiple references to shrapnel through the book) and constructed something new from them.

But Apeirogon is a lot more than this. Because, as well as reconstructing the story of Aramin and Elhanan, McCann has taken a multitude of other threads, hit them all with hammers, and mixed all the pieces together before he starts re-constructing. The novel consists of 1001 fragments varying from a few pages to just a few words. Some are pictures. This means we read about bird migration, the music of John Cage, a 19th-century explorer of the Jordan river, Philippe Petit’s tightrope walk over Jerusalem (https://apnews.com/017df269d150fd80d1...), Borges’ visit to Jerusalem, and many, many other things. McCann sees connections, some of them poetic rather than literal, and presents us with a mixture, as he says, of fact and imagination that gives the reader a poetic perspective that is often profoundly moving.

It sounds complicated, but it really isn’t. Its page count suggests it is a long book, but there is a lot of white space and it doesn’t feel long (I have seen some review quotes that suggest it is too long, but that was not my experience of the book).

This is the kind of novel that is impossible to write about without feeling that you have missed out huge chunks of important information, so all I can really do is suggest you read it. You might like to watch this video clip where Bassam’s son Arab and Rami’s son Yigal share the stage together as they seek to continue their fathers’ work: https://youtu.be/oJllnXxS41M.

My thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing for an ARC via NetGalley.

[Joy D · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I love the fact that our stories can cross all sorts of borders and boundaries.” – Colum McCann

Set in Jerusalem and surrounding area, each of two fathers, a Palestinian and an Israeli, has lost a daughter to radical violence. United in loss, they become friends and join Combatants for Peace, “a bi-national, volunteer based, movement working throughout Palestine and Israel to promote peace.” Their friendship is grounded in fact. This book provides insight into how their daily lives are impacted by the conflict. The primary theme is how we are similar in our response to grief, despite whatever differences we have in life. McCann’s message is geared at instilling a spirit of peace and understanding in the world.

“In geometry, an apeirogon (from the Greek apeiros, ‘infinite, boundless’ and gonia, ‘angle’) is a generalized polygon with a countably infinite number of sides. It can be considered as the limit of an n -sided polygon as n approaches infinity.” Thus, as more sides are included, it approaches the form of a circle. McCann has structured his book in such a manner. He takes pieces and parts of history, nature, war, art, and geography, and each becomes a “chapter.” Many of these subjects are further elaborated in subsequent chapters. Some include only a single sentence, while others are many paragraphs in length. The chapters count up to 500, then back down to 1. It is an inventive and unusual way to tell a story, or in this case, series of stories showing the interconnectivity of seemingly disparate entities.

The storyline is intentionally fragmented, with snippets of information scattered here and there. It is up to the individual to piece it all together in the mind’s eye. This aspect will appeal to some readers more than others. I found it extremely creative and applaud the author for attempting to bring more harmony into a discordant world. I will be interested to see how it is received by those that live in the areas described. This ambitious book will appeal to readers of experimental fiction. I expect it will win literary awards.

Many thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an advance reader's copy. This book is scheduled to be released February 25, 2020.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, this beautiful, heartbreaking, astonishing book. There are not superlatives adequate in quality or quantity that do justice to a work of art that both opens the mind and fills the heart.

Inspired by the real-life friendship between a Palestinian, Bassam Aramin, and an Israeli, Rami Elhanan, Apeirogon is a shimmering study of love and war. Each man lost a beloved daughter in the conflict that has torn apart this region since 1948. Smadar Elhanan was thirteen in 1997 when a suicide bomber carried out his mission as the teenager was out shopping with friends; ten years later, Abir Aramin was shot in the back of the head by a teenaged member of the Israeli army. Abir was ten years old.

The fathers meet in a bereavement group that seeks peace through unity of opposing sides. Bassam, who had spent seven years in an Israeli prison, goes on to achieve a Masters degree in Holocaust Studies; Rami sets aside his apathy and comfortable life to become a leading Jewish voice advocating for the end of Israeli Occupation of the West Bank.

The friendship that forms between these two men, one Arab, one Jew, within the novel, and in real life, embodies all the hope that the world can indeed change. I would love to have heard more from the girls' mothers, but theirs are not voices McCann chose to amplify. Perhaps in another story he will give voice to the women and girls.

Apeirogon is told in 1,001 chapters, in homage to the classic lore of 1,001 Arabian Nights. Some chapters are one sentence long; others spool out over pages. This transcends literary device; it's a way to absorb a massive amount of information, most of it factual, and the weight of emotion revealed in the stories of the Aramin and Elhanan families. There are gorgeous asides about migratory birds, the high-wire walker Philippe Petit, a weird, gross recounting of François Mitterrand's last meal, the astonishment of mathematics, and of course, geometric shapes.

An apeirogon is a polygon with an infinite yet countable number of sides. This multi-faceted novel brilliantly achieves what fiction is often called to do: present a story that causes us to think about and feel what lies deep beyond the headlines and the history books.

One of the year's best.

[Meike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2020
"Apeirogon: a shape with a countably infinite number of sides" - not the worst idea for structuring a book about the conflict between Israel and Palestine. McCann's work is semi-fictional, as it is based on the real life stories of Rami Elhanan, Israeli and Jewish, and Bassam Aramin, Palestinian and Muslim. Rami's daughter Samadar was killed in the conflict in 1997 - she was 14. Bassam's daughter was killed when she was 10, in 2007. The fathers joined forces and decided to use their grief as a weapon, to promote forgiveness and understanding by telling their stories: "Nobody can listen to me and stay the same."

McCann's book has 1,001 chapters - yup, you read that right, and there are plenty of other references to The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights, Volume 1 of 3. Just like Scheherazade tells stories to save her life, Rami and Bassam tell their stories trying to save the lives of those who might fall victim to the conflict in the future. The first 500 chapters are numbered chronologically, the next 500 count backwards; in the middle, there are two chapters numbered "500", and they capture the speeches Rami and Bassam give in their public appearances.

This narrative concept is the real star of the novel. Many of the chapters are very short, and similar to the approach played out in Frankenstein in Baghdad (which, IMHO, is a much better, more daring book), they appear like the explosion / gunshot that killed the children: Smashed into different narrative particles of different lengths, they convey aspects of the lives of the kids and their families, but also extrapolate. We read about birds migrating over the war zone, about Jorge Luis Borges who visited the area ("Borges wrote that it only takes two facing mirrors to form a labyrinth"), and also get some info about weapons and how large parts of the world are connected to the conflict in one way or another.

Social media is currently debating whether this novel should have been excluded from the longlist for two reasons: For one, Colum McCann is an Irish dude, so some are stating that him telling the story of Israelis and Palestinians is cultural appropriation. To that I say: The Great Believers is a fantastic book, although I'm under the impression that Rebecca Makkai is not a gay man. The main problem with books like American Dirt is not that the author is not a person of color, but that they are badly written. And then there are allegations brought up by Roxane Gay that McCann assaulted her friend. The Booker and the author have not commented.

Looking purely at the novel, I have to say that my problem with it is that it carries its intention on its sleeve - subtle this is not, it's a very blatant manifesto, and I think that's exactly what McCann intended to do here. Obviously, it's a valid argument that a conflict like this does not call for subtlety, but for activism. But to me, this was a very long piece of activism, executed in a highly artificial textual structure that became tedious after, let's say chapter 329. This book is in-your-face.

And it's not a bad book at all, but IMHO, it's overwritten and burdened with narrative intention. To me, this is not a Booker winner.

[piperitapitta · Rating 5 out of 5]

A casa, fratello



Loro sono Bassam Aramim e Rami Elhanan e questo è Apeirogon di Colum McCann, uno dei libri più belli che abbia letto negli ultimi anni, no fiction e saggio, ”un ibrido con un nucleo di invenzione, un'opera di narrazione che, come ogni narrazione” scrive lo stesso McCann “cuce insieme congetture, memorie, fatti e inventiva”.
Colum McCann è irlandese naturalizzato statunitense.

E poi ci sono Abir e Smadar, le loro due bambine morte a dieci anni l'una dall'altra: ”Smadar Elhanan ha 13 anni quando il 4 settembre 1997 tre giovani terroristi si fanno esplodere nel pieno centro di Gerusalemme e la uccidono insieme ad altre quattro persone. Sta andando con le amiche ad acquistare libri per la scuola, ascoltano sul walkman Sinead O’Connor. La violenza dell’esplosione la scaraventa in aria.

Abir Aramin ha invece dieci anni quando nel 2007 una guardia di frontiera israeliana diciottenne la colpisce alla testa con una pallottola di gomma dalla feritoia di una jeep. È appena uscita dal negozio dove ha comprato un braccialetto di caramelle, indossa l’uniforme della scuola. La gonna azzurra e la camicetta bianca. L’ambulanza che la trasporta a Gerusalemme, rimane bloccata per ore a un checkpoint lungo il confine. Muore due giorni dopo all’ospedale Hadassah, lo stesso dove anni prima era nata Smadar."

"La loro morte è uno schianto in cui Rami e Bassam si ritrovano fratelli. Decidono di usare “la potenza del loro dolore come arma” e con l’associazione Parents Circle Family Forum girano il mondo portando la loro storia. “Sono Rami Elhanan, il padre di Smadar”. “Sono Bassam Aramim, il padre di Abir”. Basta guardarli sul palco, mentre finiscono uno la frase dell’altro, per cogliere la potenza del legame che li unisce – la perdita più impensabile, la più indicibile per ogni genitore.”



E poi ci sono tutti i fili invisibili che uniscono gli infiniti lati dell'Apeirogon - ”un poligono con un numero infinitamente numerabile di lati” - che compongono un quadro complesso, uniscono le tracce delle rotte migratorie di migliaia di specie di uccelli che sorvolano i cieli di Israele, Cisgiordania e della Striscia di Gaza, al filo che Philippe Petit (https://youtu.be/pmEjYUW4pc0) in una mattina di maggio del 1987 sospende sulla Valle dell’Hinnomon per attraversarla e lasciare volare libera una colomba (un piccione quasi bianco, ”Niente colombe a Gerusalemme”, in realtà) ai fili che uniscono le tante storie di un'umanità conosciuta, dimenticata e ritrovata fatta di letteratura, matematica, pittura, architettura, musica e poesia, di sangue e di morti, senza mai dare l'impressione di voler cercare di pareggiare i conti, o di affermare che quello che è stato fatto equivale a quello che si è subito, ma solo, solamente, che il dolore è dolore e che c'è un'unica parola che ha davvero senso, e che quella parola è "pace".



«Indossò l'ampio costume bianco di un giullare di corte. La gamba destra con il pallido blu di Israele, la gamba sinistra con i colori della bandiera palestinese.»

Combattenti per la pace (Combatants For Peace) è l'altro movimento di cui entrambi fanno parte, Bassam, che prima del matrimonio ha trascorso sette anni in carcere e che da quell'esperienza è stato trasformato, da prima della morte di Abir - https://cfpeace.org/bassam-aramin/

«All'inizio non m'importava niente di loro. D'accordo, erano diversi, e con questo? Fu solo in seguito che cominciammo a sentirci responsabili l'uno verso il popolo dell'altro. C'era voluto più di un anno. E fondammo Combattenti per la Pace. Lì all'Everest Hotel, in cima alla strada, vicino all'insediamento, accanto al Muro, a due minuti da qui.
Rumi, il poeta sufi, ha detto qualcosa che non dimenticherò mai: Ben oltre il giusto e lo sbagliato c'è un campo, ti aspetterò là.»

Potrei parlare per ore di questo libro e ci vorrebbero molte altre parole per riuscire a descriverne l’importanza, l’umanità, il dolore e la bellezza che lo pervadono, ma non è una lettura facile, più di una volta mi sono dovuta fermare per asciugare le lacrime o ricacciarle indietro, non è una lettura per tutti, bisogna avere voglia di divagare, di ascoltare McCann ripetere i fatti o le parole come un mantra da ogni angolazione della storia, non è facile raccontare cosa si prova leggendo parole che feriscono come schegge e al tempo stesso aprono alla speranza, aiutano a sognare l’impossibile, bisogna lasciare che siano le mille storie da Le mille e una notte a farsi “stratagemma per la vita di fronte alla morte”, che siano loro a comporre l’architettura di un libro che si fa musica, di una musica che compone il cerchio. Meglio allora che a parlare siano le parole di McCann, che poi sono quelle di Rami, che poi sono quelle di Bassam.



«Nel suo insieme, un apeirogon si avvicina alla forma di un cerchio, ma una visione ingrandita di un suo piccolo segmento appare come una linea retta. È possibile arrivare infine a qualsiasi punto dell’insieme. Ogni luogo è raggiungibile. Ogni cosa è possibile, anche l’apparentemente impossibile.»

[Fran · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Once, long ago, these roads were so much easier to travel. Even in bad times. No by passes, no permits, no walls, no unapproved paths, no sudden barricades...Now it is a tangle of asphalt, concrete, light pole. Walls. Roadblocks. Barricades. Gates. Strobe lights. Motion activation. Electronic locks." In the hills of Beit Jala, an unmarked blimp with computers and infrared cameras identifies every vehicle's license plate: Israeli-yellow plate. Palestinian-green plate.

"The shopkeeper heard the pop". "A child on the pavement." Abir Aramin, 10 years old, was hit by a rubber bullet after purchasing a candy bracelet. The border guard firing the bullet was 18 years old. "...traffic had been blocked by the soldiers at the far end of the road. Nothing was being allowed through: no ambulances, no police, no paramedics." "Two hours later, the ambulance carrying Abir was still stalled near the checkpoint."

Smadar Elhanan, age 13, died at the hands of a suicide bomber. Smadar was "a firecracker...she danced on the table...cartwheeled in the garden." She had been out shopping for school books. Smadar's father,"Rami often felt that there were nine or ten Israelis inside him, fighting. The conflicted one. The shamed one...the bereaved one. The one who marvelled at the [surveillance] blimp's invention. The one sick and tired of all the seeing...".

Abir Aramin's father Bassam, had been imprisoned in Hebron as a teenager. During his 7 year imprisonment, Hertzl, a kindly Israeli prison guard, threw himself over Bassam to prevent one of Bassam's frequent beatings. Under the prison's Open University System, Bassam took classes in Hebrew. "Know your enemy, know yourself". "It slowly dawned on Bassam that the only thing they had in common was that both sides had once wanted to kill people they did not know...". In 2005, he co-founded Combatants for Peace.

Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian and Rami Elhanan, an Israeli, met at a meeting of Combatants for Peace. Rami thought of war as a sort of "awful artwork: the stretchers went in white and came out red." " [Bassam] no longer wanted to fight...Language was the sharpest weapon...He wanted to wield it." "Soon they were meeting virtually every single day. More than their jobs, this became their jobs: to tell the story of what happened to their girls."

The power of "Apeirogon: A Novel" by Colum McCann lies in the tome's unique style of prose. Presented in 1001 numbered segments, varying in length from one sentence to several pages, author McCann alternates between time periods and interconnects stories that include the toll of the Holocaust, the use of weaponry such as rubber bullets and coffin tanks, and the use of cardboard blowguns as a means of communication from prison. The grief experienced on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is sensitively handled. This work of fiction is based upon two real crusaders for Mid-East peace, Rami Elhanan and Bassam Aramin. Highly recommended!

Thank you Random House Publishing Group-Random House and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review "Apeirogon".

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before I start this review, I have a confession to make. Other than, “Dancer,” which I loved, I haven’t read anything else by Colum McCann. When I came across this on NetGalley, I almost didn’t think of requesting it. I have too many books to read and review – it was due out fairly soon. I couldn’t fit it in. However, when a book calls to you, it calls and, with a lack of self-control which I am prone to, when it comes to the written word, I clicked the button. So, I almost came to miss this book, which will, undoubtedly, be in my top books of 2020 and, indeed, my top books, ever. This should win awards. However, more importantly, it should be read, because books are there to open our eyes, and our hearts, and our minds, to difficult subjects.

For me, this was a difficult book. My own daughter is between the ages of Abir and Smadar, two young girls – one Palestinian and one Israeli – both killed; their deaths bringing their families and, in particular, their fathers, together. Smadar was killed by a suicide bomber, as she went to the mall. She loved Sinaed O’Connor, she wore a Blondie T-Shirt. She liked dance and music and was always moving. She weaved her way through the mall, with her friends, on a day when she went to buy books and sign up for dance class. Abir was crossing the road near her school, to buy candy. Her uneaten, candy bracelet, was a reminder of a casual, ordinary trip to the local shop, put to an end by a jumpy, eighteen year old soldier, who shot a rubber bullet and ended her life.

In this novel, McCann weaves these stories together. The Parents Circle, started by an orthodox Jew, whose son, Arik, was killed by Hamas in 1994. An, ‘organisation of the bereaved,’ who have, ‘an equality of pain.’ A pain I can hardly bear to imagine, but this is a group of people who are, ‘sharing their sorrow. Not using it, or celebrating it, but sharing it.’ Most of all it is the way the tragic deaths of two young girls bring together their fathers, Bassam Aramin and Rami Elhanan, into an understanding. Of a Palestinian who is moved to study the Holocaust. Of an Israeli whose daughter had died when he met Bassam, and who, terribly, had to witness the murder of his friend’s daughter and the court case that followed.

Although this does, indeed, tell the stories of Smadar, Abir, and their families, this is no linear narrative. McCann uses short chapters – sometimes only one line. He meanders; one topic leading to another. A traveller, a weapon, a hunger strike, a wall. Glimpses of borders, or graffiti, then a sudden feeling of terror – a father on his way to an airport, hearing the news of a bomber. A seemingly innocuous call from a school… I almost missed this novel and, if I had simply decided that I didn’t have time for it, I would have been less for having not read it. Important, profound, poignant and moving. I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review. I will buying a copy for my shelves.