. A compendium of the conflict mixes fact with fiction to create a profound account of pain and healing . McCann’s shards are set apart from one another on the page by a thumb’s-width of white space. ... McCann began to craft Apeirogon, which uses their real-life stories to begin another—one that crosses centuries and continents, stitching together time, art, history, nature, and politics in a tale both heartbreaking and hopeful. Often these phrases are his own, such as “the rim of a tightening lung.”. And the story was uplifting, wonderful - like a fragrant flower growing out of a dung heap. “Apeirogon” is an empathy engine, utterly collapsing the gulf between teller and listener. But it’s undisputably a novel, and, to my mind, an exceedingly important one. McCann interprets Salwa’s silence as a choice: If the journalists “could have understood her anger, if they could somehow have captured it without making a spectacle of it, she would have talked with them, but she knew, she just knew: a Muslim woman, a Palestinian, the crime of her geography. It achieves its aim by merging acts of imagination and extrapolation with historical fact. But it’s undisputably a novel, and, to my mind, an exceedingly important one. About Apeirogon: A Novel NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A quite extraordinary novel. . Reading “Apeirogon,” we move beyond an understanding of Rami and Bassam’s grief from the outside; we begin to share it. But his analysis of the predicaments that face the Middle East is not raw or original or sophisticated. … You do this for many long hours until eventually, very late at night, you and your wife find yourselves in the morgue.”, [ This book was one of our most anticipated titles of February. Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Apeirogon: The New York Times bestseller at Amazon.com. This trending method of organizing a novel (for example, Jenny Offill) is not yet insufferable but has a trap door: It exaggerates a writer’s weaknesses. Each sentence has an apricot-colored scarf tied around its neck. In an author’s note at the front of this novel, McCann writes: “We live our lives, suggested Rilke, in widening circles that reach out across the entire expanse.” McCann has a gift for quoting others at their most flatulent: “The only interesting thing is to live, said Mitterand”; “Hertzl wrote: If you divide death by life, you will find a circle.”, For added effect, McCann repeats lines he likes, such as the Mitterand quote, again and again. Apeirogon: a shape with a countably infinite number of sides ... It’s a clumsy title for a novel, one might argue, a title requiring explan­ation. It does far more than make an argument for peace; it is, itself, an agent of change. Colum McCann has found the form and voice to tell the most complex of stories, with an unexpected friendship between two men at its powerfully beating heart' KAMILA … I learned some new ones, besides Apeirogon. In others, we flash back to earlier points in their lives. Throughout the novel, McCann deftly connects these micro-narratives to Smadar and Abir’s stories, and to their fathers’; they are the complex stuff of life in Israel. It is possible to admire “One Thousand and One Nights” while having learned through hard experience that a writer who derives too much inspiration from it is generally one to avoid, unless what’s desired is a self-inflicted intellectual glitter-bombing. And if, as we read, we experience the fugue-like recurrence of those details and hundreds of others, we begin to understand what it might be like for the girls’ fathers to have to relive the minutiae of their daughters’ deaths, day after day, forever. Amid this marvelous complexity I found myself listening hard for women’s voices, especially those of the girls’ mothers. Colum McCann’s New Novel Makes a Good-Intentioned Collage Out of Real Tragedy, Colum McCann, whose new novel is “Apeirogon.”. In fact, they do the opposite. At times, Apeirogon strains too hard for connections and patterns, which distract and detract from the story’s emotional core. This novel, divided into 1,001 fragmentary chapters — a number alluding to “The Thousand and One Arabian Nights” — reflects the infinite complications that underlie the girls’ deaths, and the unending grief that follows. In the weeks following her daughter’s death, she spoke to the press about her belief that Israeli government policies were responsible for the suicide bombers’ act. Offill’s weakness is that, despite her comic tone, her wit can fizzle. As with Bob Geldof speaking of Ethiopian famine at the time of Live Aid, McCann’s ardor is unmistakable. Still, this remarkable book rises to embody the geometric form, folding an uncountable number of stories within itself, the lives of Palestinians and Israelis, stretching back into the past and off into the future. McCann’s numbered shards — they ascend from 1 to 500, then turn and begin to descend — offer structure in place of content. An ambitious novel about an Israeli, a Palestinian, and the grief they share in common. $30.00 . It’s as if the author were gunning for the Paulo Coelho Chair in Maudlin Schlock. ]. They want for their grandchildren what the narrator of the Israeli writer David Grossman’s exquisite novel “See Under: Love” wanted, “to live in this world from birth to death and know nothing of war.” You sense you would like Rami and Bassam if you got to know them. A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE PRIX FEMINA AND THE PRIX MEDICIS WINNER OF THE PRIX DU MEILLEUR LIVRES ETRANGER CHOSEN AS A BOOK OF 2020 BY THE SUNDAY TIMES , OBSERVER , GUARDIAN , i PAPER , FINANCIAL TIMES , NEW STATESMAN , SCOTSMAN , IRISH TIMES … NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A quite extraordinary novel. Apeirogon by Colum McCann review – new perspectives on Israel-Palestine. It achieves its aim by merging acts of imagination and extrapolation with historical fact. For in store availability, please contact us. These real-life events form the seed of “Apeirogon,” Colum McCann’s powerful and prismatic new novel. I have no fear. . He’d like to chime with Shirley MacLaine in “The Apartment,” who looks into a broken mirror and says to Jack Lemmon: “I like it that way. Aramin co-founded the activist group Combatants for Peace; Elhanan joined up after his son Elik brought him to a meeting, some seven years before Abir’s death. They have become friends and work together, through an organization called Combatants for Peace, to bring the opposing sides together. We’re evicted from the narrative on almost every page so that McCann can tweezer in arty and only vaguely relevant facts about birds, or about John Cage’s music, or about the Dead Sea Scrolls or the derivation of the word “dextrose.”, He’s going for a collage effect. McCann takes their story and drops it to the ground, where it shatters. His message is optimistic — we need to talk more, and understand each other’s humanity — and banal. “Once I thought we could never solve our conflict,” Bassam tells us; “we would continue hating each other forever, but it is not written anywhere that we have to go on killing each other. As befits a writer who ruminates about the nature of storytelling, there are 1,001 of these shards, each numbered, in a homage to “One Thousand and One Nights,” the collection of Middle Eastern folk tales. longlisted for the 2020 booker prize shortlisted for the prix mÉdicis and the prix femina a new york times bestseller a bbc book of 2020 chosen as a book of the year by the sunday times, observer, guardian, i paper, financial times, new statesman, scotsman, irish times, bbc.com, waterstones.com 'you have to read apeirogon' sunday times 'what a marvel of a book! Great writing, Walt Whitman wrote, is composed of words that are “whirled like chain-shot rocks.” Enough rocks have been whirled in the Middle East. Rami and Bassam no longer want to silo their suffering. I can do anything now.”. The new loss made them brothers. From the New York Times bestselling, National Book Award-winning, Booker Prize-longlisted author of Let the Great World Spin and Transatlantic comes the novel of a lifetime: about two men and their daughters, divided by conflict yet united in grief. The book includes this information, but might have allowed us more access to Peled-Elhanan’s consciousness, or perhaps to Rami’s imagining of his wife’s feelings. Apeirogon is an empathy engine, utterly collapsing the gulf between teller and listener. Apeirogon is an empathy engine, utterly collapsing the gulf between teller and listener. . Since 2007 they’ve traveled all over the world together, speaking about what they experienced and why they believe that a peaceful end to the occupation is not only possible, but necessary. They’re numbered from 1 to 500 and then back from 500 to 1, with Chapter 1,001, the ending, located at the direct center of the book. Rami’s wife, Nurit Peled-Elhanan, is an award-winning philologist, academic and peace activist; Salwa Aramin, mother of six, is a mystery, though when she appears in this book, she’s fascinating: possessed of a teasing sense of humor, intellectual curiosity, fierce purpose, deep grief. Read honest and unbiased product reviews from our users. McCann aims to hover over vast tracts of … Musical, muscular, delicate and soaring, Apeirogon is … But it’s indisputably a novel, and, to my mind, an exceedingly important one. The hero makes a friend of his enemy. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. From multiple angles, we witness the events that led to their daughters being killed. Nominated for the Booker Prize 2020. “Apeirogon” — the title refers to a shape with a limitless number of sides — is so solemn, so certain of its own goodness and moral value, that it tips almost instantly over into camp, into corn. It achieves its aim by merging acts of imagination and extrapolation with historical fact. Usually Ships From Store in 3-5 Business Days (East Coast Fulfillment May take 7-10 Business Days) Related Editions. It achieves its aim by merging acts of imagination and extrapolation with historical fact. The chapters that capture their experience — and convey so much else about life in the Holy Land — move freely through time and space. Even so, the novel succeeds brilliantly at its larger project. Do we need to hear anything else? When you insist on a lot of white space between paragraphs and sometimes between single sentences, and if your work is humid, the effect can unintentionally verge on the amusing. In many of McCann’s 1,001 shards, we follow Rami and Bassam in something like real time. Colum McCann has found the form and voice to tell the most complex of stories, with an unexpected friendship between two men at its powerfully beating heart' KAMILA SHAMSIE . These stories are so powerful, and so excruciating, that a reader might wonder what more a writer can do beyond reporting them. Those chapters are bookended by two pages starkly illustrated with small photos of what might be desert or ocean: the visual equivalent of a moment of silence. It achieves its aim by merging acts of imagination and extrapolation with historical fact. She would find blessing there.” In these pages, though, her silence isn’t necessary. … When they killed my daughter they killed my fear. Apeirogon is an empathy engine, utterly collapsing the gulf between teller and listener. . And it’s as if the reader has been given 10 seconds and a bong hit between each one; time to squint and nod and say, “So true.”, A sampling of those sentences: “He had learned that the cure for fate was patience”; “In a letter to Rami, Bassam wrote that one of the principal qualities of pain is that it demands to be defeated first, then understood”; “The geese are said to bring news of the dead to the heavens.”. . When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. Apeirogon is an empathy engine, utterly collapsing the gulf between teller and listener. McCann, Colum 'Nothing like any book you've ever read' MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM 'A quite extraordinary novel. This is an early warning sign. Best Sellers Today's Deals Electronics Help Gift Ideas Books New Releases Home Computers Sell. When we learn, for example, the names of 36 species of migratory birds that traverse an ancient and perilous flight path over Israel every year, then study the design of the slingshots boys used thousands of years ago to bring those birds down — and then learn that Bassam was in the habit of slinging stones in protest before he threw the grenade that landed him in prison, and finally that the shooter who killed Abir thought he was under attack by protesters throwing stones — we understand that the earlier sections weren’t really about birds or slingshots, but about the millions of factors — geographic, historical, political — that lead to a senseless death. Add to Wish List. Perspectives on Israel-Palestine urgency of finding a solution to the underlying problem review – new perspectives on Israel-Palestine girls still. Always something new to be said 7-10 Business Days ( East Coast Fulfillment May take 7-10 Business (. 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