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. By placing them at the center of the book, and by setting them off formally, McCann indicates their primary importance in the novel. Amid this marvelous complexity I found myself listening hard for women’s voices, especially those of the girls’ mothers. Rami and Bassam no longer want to silo their suffering. They are tiles without grout. 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 … It’s about two fathers — Rami Elhanan, an Israeli, and Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian — who each lost a young daughter to senseless violence. 'You have to read Apeirogon' Sunday Times 'Nothing like any book you've ever read' MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM 'An essential hymn to peace and forgiveness' independent.co.uk 'A quite extraordinary novel. Named a most anticipated book of 2020 by the New York Times, O, The Oprah Magazine and Library Journal, among others, Apeirogon is chronicles the … A butterfly.” ~ Colum McCann, Apeirogon. McCann’s shards are set apart from one another on the page by a thumb’s-width of white space. A contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review, he teaches in the Hunter College MFA Creative Writing program. . Anything at all. . It achieves its aim by merging acts of imagination and extrapolation with historical fact. The hero makes a friend of his enemy. When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. 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. 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. … 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. But it’s undisputably a novel, and, to my mind, an exceedingly important one. And the story was uplifting, wonderful - like a fragrant flower growing out of a dung heap. 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. As with Bob Geldof speaking of Ethiopian famine at the time of Live Aid, McCann’s ardor is unmistakable. His message is optimistic — we need to talk more, and understand each other’s humanity — and banal. From multiple angles, we witness the events that led to their daughters being killed. 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. Reading “Apeirogon,” we move beyond an understanding of Rami and Bassam’s grief from the outside; we begin to share it. 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. By replicating the messy nonlinear passage of time, by dealing in unexpected juxtapositions that reveal latent truths, it allows us to inhabit the interiority of human beings who are not ourselves. We learn about Rami’s time in the Israeli Army, about his experience in a tank repair unit during the Yom Kippur War, fighting and killing an enemy he couldn’t see. We learn about his early relationship with Smadar’s mother, Nurit; about his successes as a graphic designer; about his desire for a “spectacularly banal” life: “A good job, a mortgage, a safe street, leafy, no knock on the door, no midnight phone calls.” We learn, in essence, who Bassam and Rami were before their daughters’ deaths, and who they became after. . 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 Apeirogon A Novel (eBook) : McCann, Colum : NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A quite extraordinary novel. 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! 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. Her ambulance was delayed for hours at a border checkpoint, and she died two days later at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, the same hospital where Smadar was born. . Colum McCann’s new novel, “Apeirogon,” is based on an uplifting true story. “I have told this story many times, but there is always something new to be said. . Rami Elhanan and Bassam Aramin both lose their daughters when the girls are still young. about apeirogon. Apeirogon: A Novel (Large Print / Paperback) By Colum McCann. A decade later, and less than three miles away, 10-year-old Abir Aramin, wearing her school uniform and holding a candy bracelet she’d just bought, was shot in the back of the head by an 18-year-old Israeli soldier as his jeep sped around a corner. It’s as if the author were gunning for the Paulo Coelho Chair in Maudlin Schlock. Memories hit you all the time. “Apeirogon” is not a meal but a table littered with ingredients: a paw of garlic, a frozen lamb shank, two potatoes, a big knob of celeriac, three peas. Colum McCann Gives Voice to Grieving Fathers, One Israeli and One Palestinian. And, as Salwa notes, Nurit Peled-Elhanan isn’t interested in remaining silent at all. McCann aims to hover over vast tracts of … 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. It achieves its aim by merging acts of imagination and extrapolation with historical fact. To read “Apeirogon” is to watch him pick up the shards. But it’s undisputably a novel, and, to my mind, an exceedingly important one. “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. Each sentence has an apricot-colored scarf tied around its neck. The new loss made them brothers. In many of McCann’s 1,001 shards, we follow Rami and Bassam in something like real time. Intricate reconstructions of the girls’ deaths are broken up by stories of what it feels like to inhabit the Israel of recent decades — what it was like for Bassam to be imprisoned for seven years beginning at age 17, for example, after he tossed a broken hand grenade at an Israeli jeep; what it was like to be beaten daily in jail, and then to learn his captors’ history and lose his ability to see them as his sworn enemies. “I still sit in that ambulance every day,” Bassam tells us. 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, author of Home Fire LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE * NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE … But it's undisputably a novel, and, to my mind, an exceedingly important one. Rami’s Smadar dies in an explosion caused by suicide bombers; Bassam’s Abir is killed by a rubber bullet. McCann’s brilliant act of novel-making builds a wholly believable and infinitely faceted reality around Rami’s and Bassam’s first-person accounts, a rich and comprehensive context that allows us into the fathers’ experiences, their histories, their minds. McCann’s numbered shards — they ascend from 1 to 500, then turn and begin to descend — offer structure in place of content. Apeirogon: The new york times bestseller . . 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. It achieves its aim by merging acts of imagination and extrapolation with historical fact. It carries the story forward, and leads us to experience the urgency of finding a solution to the underlying problem. At times, Apeirogon strains too hard for connections and patterns, which distract and detract from the story’s emotional core. Add to Wish List. Colum McCann’s new novel, “Apeirogon,” is based on an uplifting true story. This is why they told it to McCann and others, in a scene detailed in Chapter 1,001; it’s why they travel the world together, retelling it every day. 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. These pieces, too, quickly argue their own relevance and necessity. “Apeirogon” is an empathy engine, utterly collapsing the gulf between teller and listener. 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 … “I began to think,” Rami tells us in his central chapter, “that I had stumbled upon the most important question of them all: What can you do, personally, in order to try to help prevent this unbearable pain for others?”. McCann takes their story and drops it to the ground, where it shatters. ... 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. For in store availability, please contact us. I have no fear. $30.00 . If we grasp the minute reality of Smadar and Abir’s deaths — if we know how a suicide belt detonates and how shrapnel flies, if we understand how a rubber bullet compresses upon impact, and how it fragments a skull — then we’re forced to understand that history happens to actual human beings, to our children, to us. 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, BBC.COM, … Read honest and unbiased product reviews from our users. Satyagraha (passive political resistance as practiced by Gandhi), Clepsydra (a water clock), etc. Do we need to hear anything else? About Apeirogon. McCann, Colum 'Nothing like any book you've ever read' MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM 'A quite extraordinary novel. Apeirogon: The New York Times bestseller: Author: Colum McCann Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC ISBN: 9781526607911 Pages: 480 Publication Date: 25 February 2020 Format: Paperback Availability: In Print This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. It’s one thing to read those lines in a newspaper report; it’s another to feel them from the inside. 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. About Apeirogon: A Novel NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A quite extraordinary novel. She would find blessing there.” In these pages, though, her silence isn’t necessary. It achieves its aim by merging acts of imagination and extrapolation with historical fact. Nominated for the Booker Prize 2020. In fact, they do the opposite. Apeirogon is an empathy engine, utterly collapsing the gulf between teller and listener. A compendium of the conflict mixes fact with fiction to create a profound account of pain and healing . 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. The chapters that capture their experience — and convey so much else about life in the Holy Land — move freely through time and space. 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. As if the author were gunning for the Paulo Coelho Chair in Maudlin Schlock their suffering Large Print Paperback... 7-10 Business Days ( East Coast Fulfillment May take 7-10 Business Days ( East Coast May., delicate and soaring, Apeirogon is an empathy engine, utterly collapsing the between. 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