

Colum McCann's New Novel Apeirogon Illuminates Both Sides of the Israel-Palestine Divide

The preeminent novelist’s latest is a profound prayer for peace.


Like his 2009 National Book Award-winning opus, Let the Great World Spin, and 2013’s TransAtlantic, Colum McCann’s grand and exhilarating novel Apeirogon is filled with symphonic sentences that sing of the human cost of an impossibly complex situation: In this case, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Apeirogon’s flashback-filled narrative unfolds in a single day as two men (inspired by people the author met in real life)—friends from either side who call each other “brother”—battle the firestorms of ancient hatreds while trying to heal from their own tragedy.

Apeirogon: A Novel
$18.69 (33% off)

Rami Elhanan is a 67-year-old Jewish graphic designer whose teenage daughter, Smadar, died in a suicide bombing in 1997. Bassam Aramin, from the West Bank, survived seven years of torture in an Israeli prison and became a student of the Holocaust; his girl, Abir, was killed by Israeli soldiers after buying a candy bracelet. United in grief, Rami and Bassam transcend the enmity around them to work together within the Parents Circle–Families Forum, a group of fathers, mothers, and other relatives from both factions of the geopolitical divide.

McCann, who began his career as a reporter, examines with skill and empathy the characters’ private agonies as they play out against the backdrop of war; his virtuosic storytelling conjures the confounding realities of the Israeli occupation, “the rim of a tightening lung.”

The novel’s title refers to “a shape with a countably infinite number of sides.” Throughout, there’s a rich tension between the factual and the imagined, and in the way particular tribulations are part of a universal experience: “Stories existed on their own at first,” he writes, “and were then joined together, strengthening one another.”

In the spirit of Picasso’s Guernica, Apeirogon reminds us that such incandescent art evokes humility and light in the face of oppression and loss.

For more stories like this, sign up for our newsletter.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
More From Books