A most difficult book – A most necessary journey

I don’t know where to begin - or where to end – with this extraordinary book. I can’t conceive of what it would be to inhabit the heart and the minds of the two men whose stories – whose true stories – are so very deeply, so very viscerally engaged with by Colum McCann. Nor can I conceive of how a writer managed to hold all this, to be so true to everything, and do something so masterful and subtle in the writing.

This is a book which breaks out of the confines of writing. It is a true recounting, but McCann, a novelist, has done something which breaks the linear progression of story. Time is encountered backwards, forwards, across geographies. Startling and transcendent images, both pictorially and in factual description which creates metaphors whilst purely explaining what is, constantly throws the reader into deep places

This is not a trivial game, a merely intellectual exercise with the form of the novel. I don’t know what to call it, other than a total inhabitation of – everything – all at once.

This is not, in any way a difficult intellectual read. Its difficulty is the searing intensity of feeling, thinking, understanding which plunges the reader into a viscerally felt and experienced being.

To try and move away from describing this reader’s felt experience to the ‘what is it about’ of the novel, in a simpler way without describing how much MORE than simple this book is, would not have felt right. But, a simpler explanation is certainly needed :

Rami Elhanan, an Israeli and Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian, both lost, horrifically, unexpectedly, their young daughters. Smadar, Elhanan’s daughter was blown up in a suicide bomb attack by a Palestinian. Abir, Aramins daughter was killed by a rubber bullet fired by an Israeli Defence Force border policeman.

Rami and Bassam, on either side of a conflict, became involved with each other as ‘soul brothers’ within organisations working for an end to the Occupation, and a resolution of conflict: Combatants for Peace, and the Circle of Bereaved Parents.

And it is their accounts which are being told here – factually – but, also, so very much more deeply than the laying out of events themselves. This book, again and again and again, presents us with image after image (pictorially, linguistically) of the coherence, balance, harmony and beauty which life itself embodies. Reconciliations of oppositions are shown in so very many ways to be something which is built into the structure of life.

For example, the way flocks of birds fly – a co-operation between who leads and provides the worked for dynamic for birds behind to use and coast upon, and the changing over of positions. Within the plant kingdom, trees which ‘warn’ others of danger through chemical messaging, allowing others in the vicinity to produce more chemistry rendering their leaves to become more bitter, less palatable to feeders. Within mathematics, the concept of ‘amicable numbers’ - a pair of numbers, each of which is the sum of the factors of the other. We have focused, so much, too much on the evolutionary drive of ‘conflict’. There is another equally powerful force which is about co-operation, mutuality.

Set against many different manifestations and examples of dynamic, constructive reconciliations of oppositions are reminders of the many wanton destructions wrought by our complicated, troubled, extraordinary species, upon ourselves, and upon the world we inhabit : how often we have chosen the route of ‘anti-life’ how often we inhabit aberration.

And, running through all of that, the examples of human embodiment of what it REALLY means to be fully human, human as expansively and spaciously as we could be. Bassam and Rami are exemplars for us here, offering the possibilities of another choice.

As to the book’s title, which I guess, most, like me, may need to go to the dictionary for, and which is explained within the book:

“In geometry, an apeirogon or infinite polygon is a generalized polygon with a countably infinite number of sides. Apeirogons are the two-dimensional case of infinite polytopes. In some literature, the term "apeirogon" may refer only to the regular apeirogon, with an infinite dihedral group of symmetries” (wiki definition

Infinite number of sides : subtle, nuanced, and I guess, felt as the matter and manner of this book, even if we can only inhabit it, perhaps momentarily.

Please, please read this book

A long but read - it took me a little while to ‘get’ this book, but I’m so glad I persevered.

The story of two families, one Palestinian, one Isreali, united by loss, grief and hope for peace was complex and compelling. The structure, 1001 interwoven vignettes of Rami and Bassam’s lives, descriptions of the natural world, moments of the Holocaust, seemingly random facts and so much more initially seemed strange, but ultimately added to the narrative.

I kept thinking about Apeirogon at odd moments throughout my day and will re-read in a few months - it’s fantastic and a really rewarding read.

The front cover declares very clearly that this book is “a novel”. Yet elsewhere the author refers to it as a “hybrid novel” bringing together “speculation, memory, fact and imagination”. It certainly does not read like a conventional novel. There is little in the way of plot and the two main protagonists, an Israeli and a Palestinian, are not fictional characters at all, but real, living, people. In fact, it soon becomes clear that this is much more than a novel. It is an examination of how the histories, cultures and even geographies, of Israel and Palestine, have combined in a myriad, seemingly infinite number of ways to create the most intractable conflict of modern times.

It is also a novel about storytelling and its power to change the world. And it is a story about hope.

The two men at the centre of this remarkable, multi-faceted, work are Rami Elhanan, an Israeli Jew, graphic artist and Israeli Defence Force veteran, and Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian, imprisoned for seven years for organising an attack on Israeli forces. At first glance these two men might seem to represent the two sides of the long-running struggle between these two peoples in which generation after generation of children, on both sides of the divide, learn only mistrust and hatred of one another.

But two things unite these men. The first, I think, is their willingness to look beyond their own communities and seek to understand those that they have been raised to look upon as their enemies. The second, is, of course, the loss that could have devastated their lives. For both men have known the grief of losing a daughter.

Rami Elhanan’s daughter, Smadar, was killed in a suicide bombing in Jerusalem not long before her fourteen birthday while the daughter of Bassam Aramin, Abir, was killed by a rubber bullet fired by an Israeli border guard when she was only ten years of age. Their fathers have experienced the kind of grief that all parents fear, and often believe, would destroy them but they have been able to take their grief and use it for good. In doing so, these men who might otherwise have considered themselves to be enemies now call each other “brother”.

They have chosen to work together as campaigners for peace through the Bereaved Parents Forum. What they do seems both simple and powerful. They each tell the story of their loss and their grief; what it did to them, how they overcame it and of their belief that reconciliation between their two peoples is both possible and essential for future generations of children. Their hope is that if the telling and retelling of their stories in schools, conference centres and community halls across Israel and Palestine can produce one small crack in the wall between their two peoples then there is hope that that wall can be brought down.

Make no mistake this book is a difficult read but it is also a highly rewarding one. The first challenge is the structure of the novel as it is comprised of 1,001 sections of varying lengths, including photographs, that is clearly a reference to the collection of Middle Eastern folk tales from the Islamic golden age, the One Thousand and One Nights. The only real action in the book is that for the first five hundred sections we follow Rami Elhanan as he drives his motorbike to that evening’s meeting. In the five hundredth section we are told Rami’s story as he might tell it to his audience. The next section is numbered 1,001. Then comes another section numbered 500 in which it is time for Bassam Aramin’s story to be told after which Bassam drives home to his wife as the sections wind back down to one.

During the journeys of these two men, to and from the venue at which they are to speak, in the thousand individual sections, we slowly learn so much about their lives, the deaths of their daughters, and what it means to be an Israeli and a Palestinian living through this conflict, as the author feeds the information to us piece by piece. There is also, surrounding the stories of these men, a vast amount of what seems at first to be entirely unrelated information on such things as the migration of birds, the last meal of Francois Mitterrand, a visit of Jorge Luis Borges to Jerusalem, a tightrope walk over Jerusalem, the music of John Cage, the Dead Sea Scrolls and much more besides. At first this feels confusing but slowly the reader finds there are connections to be made and comes to understand that the author is building a much broader, vivid, and complex picture of these men and their stories than might at first appear. The novel’s title refers to a polygon with an infinite, yet countable, number of sides and the author has given us a glimpse of the seemingly infinitely complex nature of the world he is describing.

This is an important book and one that, by occupying as it does the “debatable lands” between fact and fiction, and bringing us the stories of these two remarkable men, deserves to help change the world and shows us the power and potential that lies in the telling of all our stories.

I would like to express my thanks to Net Galley and Bloomsbury for making a free download of this book available to me.

An ambitious, mesmerising and masterful interweaving of fiction and fact; recounting the incidents and friendship of two men; an Israeli and a Palestinian who have each suffered the loss of a daughter amidst horrific conflict.

Told across 1001 ‘chapters’ the novel purposefully meanders through the background and foreground of their loss and their families. Drawing on the history, politics and impact of life in the region, the prose is masterful and not a word is wasted. My knowledge of Middle Eastern politics doesn’t allow me to comment on the veracity and cultural integrity but on a purely human level, this is a book that brings light to a lot of issues.

I would highly recommend this book. Thanks to Netgalley for an advanced copy.

Apeirogon isn’t a book you can read lightly. This isn’t a reflection upon its style, which is clear, eloquent, at times haunting, but instead upon the subject matter. I feel I’ve been reading a lot of books recently that play with the idea of what a novel is, that dance over the line of fact and fiction. Apeirogon is one of those books.

Based around the true stories of two men, Bassam Aramin and Rami Elhanan, who both lose a daughter to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, Apeirogon takes us through one day in their lives as both men from different sides of the divide come together as part of the Parents Circle Family Forum to talk about their experiences of loss. We move in numbered sections, from 1 to 500, up to the full depictions, given as talks, of how they lost their children, each individual story having its own number 500 as the day continues on from 500 down to one again. In between their accounts is the number 1001, that magic Arabian Nights number that uses story to delay death, that keeps their daughters alive in memory, that forces the reader and their listeners to consider the implications of a true remembrance that leads to peace. No daughter should ever be put at risk again.

There are photographs, details from their lives growing up, through jail, war, marriage, travel and parenthood. And as we flow from one man’s head and experiences to another, we take in other ideas, people and histories that throw light upon the difficulties of this conflict. We look at the migration of birds across the wall. We consider the death of one man who was preparing to translate the Arabian Nights into Italian to show the nuance lost in most European translations. We contemplate the holocaust and its impact upon Israel’s actions. We watch a tightrope walker straddle a wire across the divided city with a pigeon – rather than a dove – circling his steps instead of flying away. We’re shown how the monks whose gardens cross the wall used to grow and make their wine. And so much more besides.

This is a delicate, perfectly poised novel that requires active engagement. Here are two men seemingly at odds, who have been able to become friends, who unite in the face of a conflict that serves no one. It is political, philosophical, but most importantly human. We learn of the stolen mint that Bassam ate during his prison hunger strike – previously kept entirely secret even from his family. We wonder and share in the blindness of many Israelis unaware of the suffering on their doorstep, thinking of the Palestinian only as an object.

This is a book that could and will be studied. This is a book that should win prizes. I haven’t done it justice here, but I hope very much that it rises to the top of the book charts and gets people thinking about the importance of listening, of taking time to hear opinions and experiences different to those most like our own. I can’t recommend it highly enough and know I will be returning to its pages.

Colum McCann's writing style in Apeirogon is unlike any other book I have read. It jumps back and forth through the true stories of Bassam Aramin and Rami Elhanan. Two men from opposite sides, brought together by tragedy and building their friendship on their shared vision of the way forward for their two countries.
Their stories are inspirational and the factual snippets placed within the book teach us a lot about their world, but on occasion some feel like they are just filling a space and making a long story even longer which is why I have given 4 stars. It is not an easy book to read - but you should read it.
I was given a copy of Apeirogon by NetGalley and the publishers for my unbiased review.

Bassem and Rami live on either side of the divide, one a Jew living in Jerusalem, the other a Muslim living in Palestine. Both are committed to developing peace after they both lost an innocent daughter to the troubles between their communities.
The fact is that this is a very moving and profound novel which uses haunting imagery to enhance the emotions. The conflict between Israel and Palestine is long-running and politically sensitive, as McCann says, there are a number of countries that Israeli passport holders cannot enter. The suffering of both communities is brought to the fore through the stories of these two men, death, imprisonment and reconciliation. The metaphor that is returned to over and over is that of the birds and the research is immaculate. As McCann says, an apeirogon is an infinitely sided figure and this book has an infinite number of wonderful facets.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

I wasn't sure about this book at first but it drew me in. The technique of writing it in over 1000 parts (to mirror 1001 Nights) and using this to broaden the context of the novel with details of other facts and histories meant the book, while essentially being about the intensely personal grief of two fathers and their fight for peace and justice, had an epic scale. The Israel/Palestine problem is a travesty we need to solve, and therefore this is an important book to draw attention to the issue (although it might have been better if it had been written by someone from these regions). McCann's prose draws you into the story and leaves you wanting more.

Fabulous. Challenging. Fabulous and challenging.

Told in 1001 parts with some parts as short as a single line, the novel pulls together in so many ways.

And it's all true.

This is a raw and brutal telling of a raw and brutal story. There were times when I had to force myself to read on, so inhumane was the subject matter. Even the snippets of information - about birds, about writers, about aspects of the conflict - were matter-of-factly awful. Cruelty and pain are everywhere in this novel - and it is a novel like no other I have ever read. It's a Moby-Dick of a book, a mix of story and factual information, with a bit of Tristram Shandy's replacement of words with blank spaces or pictures - presumably because things are so horrific, nothing further can be said.

I can't say I enjoyed reading it. I constantly wanted to stop but the writing was so compelling I was forced to continue. I can't say I'm glad I did.

This is a powerful book, an important book, and one that will no doubt take it's place in the canon of works that every educated person must encounter. That encounter will not be entertaining or amusing. It will be a punch in the gut, a kick in the groin, the humiliation of nakedness and the hopelessness of loss.

Grit your teeth when you open this book, and don't expect any light relief or an upbeat ending. But read it anyway.

This is an extraordinary book, original, deeply moving and quite unforgettable. At its centre is the devastating grief of 2 fathers, one Israeli, one Palestinian, each of whom has lost a daughter in the conflict. In 2005 they meet through an organisation I’d not heard of before – Combatants for Peace – become close friends and manage to transcend their grief to work to end the pointless violence. It’s a remarkable book, told in numbered sections – 1,001 of them – some just a single sentence, some longer episodes narrating the stories of Rami Elhanan and Bassam Arabin and their loss, with anecdotes, poetry, quotations, photographs and many hard-hitting facts, constantly surprising and, cumulatively, a profound meditation on the geopolitical situation and the continuing and seemingly intractable tragedy that daily destroys lives. A mix of fiction, non-fiction, documentary, science, it’s wide-ranging, inspiring and, at times, almost overwhelming. Those children’s faces will never leave me.
Elhanan and Aramin are real people and were supportive of McCann’s writing. Look them up. Learn from them. Help them and their efforts.
And an apeirogon? It’s a shape with an infinite but countable number of sides – an appropriate title for this unique book.

I am grateful to net galley for my copy of this book, which I was given in exchange for an honest review.

Apeirogon: A polygon with an infinite but countable number of sides.

The Israel-Palestine conflict. An apeirogon like no other. In 1,001 fragments, Irish author Colum McCann attempts to assemble this conflict, through the lens of one story.

On September 4th 1997, Israeli girl Smadar, 13 years old, went to buy books in central Jerusalem. There, she was killed in a Palestinian suicide bombing.

Ten years later, on January 20th 2007, 10 year old Palestinian girl Abir Aramin was walking to school when she was killed by a random rubber bullet, fired by an Israeli border police officer.

This ‘hybrid novel’, as McCann calls it, recounts the unlikely friendship between the girls’ fathers, built on the common ground of their grief. Palestinian Bassam Aramin and Israeli Rami Elhanan joined the ‘Combatants for peace’, a group of bereaved Israelis and Palestinians who lost loved ones and fight for peace.

The central story is powerful, heartbreaking, and utterly convincing. It argues that peace, dialogue, humanity, can be the only way forward in the middle eastern situation that seems, today, more desperately stuck than ever.

This message may not convince everyone, in such a bloody, fraught conflict. In addition, McCann may be accused of cultural appropriation. Both accusations would be unfair, as this novel gives an account of the tragic story it focuses on, and the wider conflict, in a way that honours the facts, while allowing plenty of space for nuance, questions, ambivalence.

About the novel’s structure: McCann tells this story in fragments. The story is interspersed with lists, descriptions of migratory birds and their routes, Mitterand’s last meal- and countless other observations. This structure doesn’t always work. Ultimately, it is the central story, in its simplicity and the grief it carries, that shines through

Colum McCann's Apeirogon takes the stories of two grieving fathers as the centrepoint for an astonishing survey of love, life, loss, religion, history, voice and much more. Rami, an Israeli, and Bassam, a Palestinian, both lose their daughters through the conflict. They unite in their desire to tell their stories as a means to encourage people to reflect and to change, so that a peaceful future for Palestinians and Israelis might be found.

Stylistically i have never read anything like Apeirogon before. Structured into 1001 chapters, some as short as a line, or comprising just a picture, the novel weaves the stories of Rami and Bassam (and their daughters Smadar and Abir) into wider meditations on many topics. As the narrative circles, leaps around and branches out, Mc Cann draws these astonishing parallels, between songbirds and stories say, or between the flight of birds and the flight of stones; between stones and bullets, between surveillance and imprisonment. These give the novel a constant buzzing energy. We are encouraged to think about the interconnectivity of all things and people, past and present, nature and civilisation. Ultimately the book shows the illusory nature of 'taking sides'.

This was a very thought-provoking book. I would hesistate to come back to it as it is incredibly lengthy but I am so glad to have read it.

I have not finished this and I am not sure I will, because the telling of the story of Bassam and Rami is broken up with anecdotes, information extracts and other digressions in chapters which range from one sentence to much longer, which although interesting and relevant, split the main story up. These chapters are numbered from one to 500 and then back to one again for no reason I have detected yet. It is difficult to read this on a kindle without the index, which may assist in deciphering the complex, very very long novel. The writing is beautiful, engaging and relevant. I have been listening to the readings on Radio 4 and cannot deny that the message is a powerful one but for me the format gets in the way and may be a calculated device to attract the Booker Prize literati.

Apeirogon by Colum McCann

You could be embarrassed asking for this in your local library but I guarantee it is well worth the effort. It's a fascinating book and highly recommended.

An apeirogon is a conceptual polygon with an infinite number of sides and in terms of this story, I hesitate to say novel, it makes perfect sense. The book is about two men, Basim Aramin and Rami Elhanan and their two dead daughters, one killed by an Israeli rubber bullet and the other caught up in a bomb explosion detonated by a Palestinian. These are real people not fiction.

Central to the plot is the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the many sides of the story explore its impact on Israel and its people, the Palestinian people and the world. I don't know if this is original but Colum McCann describes this as the 'preoccupation' a notion which goes far beyond the simple idea of some occupied territory. So, the book explores tangents and angles diverging away from the main plot. There are details on rubber bullets and bomb-making which are unflinching in terms of man's inhumanity. The deaths of both girls and the coincidences which put them in the wrong place at the wrong time are minutely explored as is the nobility of the two fathers in trying to combat the hatred underlying both events and the near impossibility of the task.

The book doesn't take sides but it is pretty hard to justify not just the occupation but the petty day-to-day management of it. It makes you realise how this 'preoccupation' is a festering boil in the Israeli state, its culture and its people. There are children in Israel who have known nothing else and like the Palestinian children on the other side of the wall they have been damaged if not actually targeted. The book covers some of the attempts to bring peace but is never romantic about the possibility of a happy ending. It explores how different people, from suicide bombers to Mossad agents, engage with the occupation in their own extraordinarily cruel ways because they have been so brutalised by its practice and culture.

The two fathers are, in some way, the heroes of the occupation but Colum McCann makes no attempt to portray them as anything but two ordinary men trying to make sense of dreadful events and in some way wanting to bring the warring communities together. With minimal chance of success, they keep trying.

It's worth making the point that this book is not some kind of political or ideological tract but you come away with the feeling that both of the nations, other countries and other people spend a lot of time engaged with the consequences of the occupation without engaging with the core. It a sobering thought that the current Home Secretary visited the occupied territories within the last few years, flouting a United Nations agreement while Labour Party members who have, sometimes, intemperately criticised the occupation have been branded as anti-Semitic. We are just another face of the apeirogon.

This is not like a any book I have read before.
In the author's note at the end of the book, McCann says that this is a hybrid novel. There is a story - a powerful, heartbreaking yet uplifting tale - but also factual snippets, photographs and gobbets of history. ​Like the title, this book tells a story that is limitless and boundless with many sides.

The story is about two men who have lost their young daughters in horrific circumstances. One man is Palestinian and the other is Israeli and they join a group of parents who have suffered the same loss. As a group they travel the world to give talks about what had happened to them.

One girl is shot in the back of her head with a rubber bullet and the other is killed during a terrorist attack by someone wearing a suicide belt, or a 'murder vest', a term I prefer and will use from now on. The suffering for the families is revisited throughout, from different perspectives but always raw and painful. Like the deaths, the suffering become global and limitless. Actual photographs (shown in the book) and other images that remind them of their loss, lines from poems, films and filmmakers, history and politics so that 'her absence is her presence.'

The book is complex and far-reaching; the theme of infinite borders threads through in human history, religion, and culture. To demonstrate this are birds. They are on the cover and many chapters explain how they are caught for the sport of hunting, are hunted themselves and eaten by the French president, and how they are tagged and sold. As birds they have no borders during flight and yet their lives are full of suffering and control.

The format of this hybrid novel has many chapters that number forward and backward, of varying length, sometimes only a sentence or a picture, of thoughts or facts, of events not told chronologically: 'the simplest form of infinity'. A book that has to be read.
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Beautifully written memorable story about loss and grief. An Israeli father and. a Palestinian father both lose a daughter. This is a heartbreaking read in places. There is so much raw emotion. The descriptions of their surroundings are so good I could visualise them. There are so many memorable stories about life.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

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'.

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 will undoubtedly win awards – it 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.

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 befalls 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 grief stricken fathers find a commonality in their grief, 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.