Colum McCann

Apeirogon: A Novel Colum McCann

Apeirogon: a shape with a countably infinite number of sides. Rami Elhanan and Bassam Aramin are two men. Rami's license plate is yellow. Bassam's license plate is green. It takes Rami fifteen minutes to drive to the West Bank. The same journey for Bassam, down the same streets, takes an hour and a half. Both men are fathers. Both men are fathers of daughters. Both daughters were there, before they were gone. Rami's daughter Smadar was killed by a Palestinian suicide bomb in 1997. Bassem's daughter Abir was born in the same year; and ten years later, she was shot and killed by a member of Israeli border police while standing outside her school. There was a candy bracelet in her pocket that she hadn't had time to eat. Rami and Bassam's lives are completely symmetrical. Rami and Bassam's lives are completely asymmetrical. Rami and Bassam are friends. Unfolding its infinite sides one by one, framing the two men who stand at its heart, the boundlessly exquisite Apeirogon is an exhilarating new form, and confirms Colum McCann as one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. In a kaleidoscopic palimpsest scratched without end over an ancient city, it etches out a timeless question: how do we continue to live after the most precious thing is lost?