Apeirogon: A Novel

The author has said this book is a hybrid. If so, it's a cross between a dragon and a dove.Two murdered young girls, Abir and Smadar, are at the center of a kaleidoscope, a swirl of fragmented yet connected experience and brilliant color, of the fragility and power of children, of the fragility and power of birds (one swan, we are told, can take out an airplane), of the powers of art, the heart-leap of daring in the face of annihilation. Of the grief of two fathers, who are real living people on opposing sides of a hideous war over a tiny strip of land. Against that war, they form "The Parents Circle." The requirements for membership? A dead child and the will to speak. What can you do when your child dies?This book is about what they do, their struggle to understand and yet to survive. It's about the struggle of birds, likewise, to fly, to survive. Of writers to illuminate, of painters to portray, so that something may survive. Of inventors to make weapons, of young soldiers to try not to die.By page twenty, you will loathe your species for its atrocities against living flesh and spirit; you will see what a rubber bullet can do to a child's skull. (You might even retrieve it use it to kill again.) How Semtex can paint a town square red. And what the clean-up crew must do to erase the atrocity. What exploding bats and burning babies and roasted larks (because the world belongs to all creatures) can do to your mind. You can't stand it! But you can't put it down.Then by page 50 or 60 - no, you are not inured to torment, but you will begin to find a breath of air, a bit of oxygen in the struggle, in memory, in shared grief. One of the fathers has a motorcycle, and I found myself relieved at the movement of the handle bars, the unevenness of the pavement. Lulling for a moment.And when at last the book has folded you completely inside itself, you may come to love what it says we can be and do, what artists and thinkers and children and birds have been and have done, and go on being and doing. Forgiveness is impossible. But hope is within our grasp.This book has the greatness of spirit I found in books as a child, but this one is for adults who want to love the lived-in world the way children, even in dire circumstances, seem able to do. To be able to sleep on the wing, like the frigatebird, to help our neighbor in the midst of a firefall. We want to, but we need an anchor, a guide to take us through the burning cities and forests and oceans around us."Epic"? What a cop-out. "Ambitious"? What is that but a sneer? Better just to say this is a book that is wholly itself, in which every word is right and rightly placed. It is as perfect as the falconer's hawks it describes. As potent as the Picasso dove that figures so often in its pages.

Comprised of 1001 scenes from the lives of two fathers...one Israeli and one Palestinian...whose daughters were killed in the ongoing struggles and violence of Israel and Palestine, the novel vividly describes the trauma of those deaths. The telling focuses on their experience of loss and their work as friends and peace activists, but carries so much more. The historical and literary references, the depiction of daily life, the evocation of place...in the night sky, in carefully tended orchards, in home as a place of recovery and refuge...combine to make the totally of the novel more than the sum of its parts. Highly recommended.

McCann's latest demonstrates the power of empathy--something sadly missing from the hearts of many people these days. Set in contemporary Israel, the novel tells the real-life stories of Rami Elhanon, an Israeli, and Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian, two men who have suffered greatly from the conflicts over the homeland. Raised to view one another as the enemy, these fathers were brought together by personal tragedy and joined forces to work towards a peaceful settlement of the centuries-old dispute. In the 1990s, Rami's 13-year old daughter, Smadar, while shopping with friends, was killed in a suicide bombing. Ten years later, Bassam's daughter Abir, aged 10, was struck and killed by a rubber bullet fired by a nervous (and possibly trigger happy) teenage soldier while coming out of a candy store across the street from her school. The grieving fathers meet at a parents' support group whose members not only offer one another support but who feel compelled to stop the hostilities. Their shared suffering leads to an empathy that allows them to transcend the political and religious differences and centuries of conflict and hatred.While the novel is structured around memories related to McCann by Rami and Bassam and is enhanced by McCann's research, it is not simply biographical. What he has succeeded in doing is to convey what it must have been like for both men to live in a disputed territory. I had never really thought about how it would be to live in a place where I felt I had to be constantly on guard, worried about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. As a Palestinian, Bassam was subject to curfews and restrictions as to what roads he could travel, and he could be stopped at a checkpoint at any time where he could be subject to strip searches, beatings, and arrest. He had seen family, friends, and neighbors roughly evicted from their homes without warning, their possessions shattered or confiscated. As a teenager, he was arrested as a terrorist for participating in a protest and spent seven years in prison. There, the kindness of one of his guards led him to learn Hebrew so that they could better communicate, and this, in turn, led Bassam to become a student of the Holocaust. Rami's backgroun was somewhat similar, despite the fact that he is an Israeli Jew. He served his compulsory tour of duty in the Israeli army where he participated in checkpoints, searches, and general warfare during the Occupation. His freedom of movement was also restricted, and, of course, there was the ever-present fear of suicide bombers. But Rami also had men of peace in his family: his father-in-law was an original member of the Knesset but was viewed by many as a traitor because he advocated for a peaceful settlement.It is McCann's structure, added to his poetic prose, that gives readers of <i>Apeirogon</i> the impression of living inside the minds, hearts, and bodies of Rami and Bassam. The book is written in 1001 chapter that tell their stories not in a typically lineal narrative form but jumping through time and space and from topic to topic. The chapters move from 1 to 500, chapter 1001 marks the middle point, and then we move from 500 to 1. I'm not entirely sure what McCann intended; perhaps 1001 is the meeting point of the two men, two sides, two religions, although these are interspersed throughout. Some chapters are quite long while others consist of a single sentence or a photograph. Some chapters are somewhat dry summaries of history and politics; others are composed of long lists of items of both small and large consequence. But whether he is describing the care and habits of birds, the eating habits of heads of state, the political history of Israel, meetings of The Parents' Circle, Smadar's love of dancing or Abir's love of math, or any other topic, two themes are never far from the surface: the power of the individual to destroy, and the power of the individual to make things whole again.This is the kind of book that you need to accept on it's own terms and to experience rather than simply read. Feel it rather than analyzing it or searching for a single line of meaning. It's an amazing story, amazingly told.

McCann is a fine novelist and this is his best book so far. Don’t let the difficulty of the subject put you off. It’s a hopeful book about the value of empathy and understanding, and it’s beautifully written.

I couldn’t stop reading- and reflecting. It gave me pause, and forced me to rethink the whole Palestine Israel conflict, especially considering the current war that has erupted between them. I look forward to recommending it to family and friends, and to hear their thoughts. A simply amazing work of literature.

A beautifully written, heartfelt plea for peace: describes the loss of a child to war as experienced by an Israeli and a Palestinian father. Together they argue for an end to a senseless war that destroys but achieves nothing.

Having heard Hassam and Rami speak in a Scottish church in Lausanne Switzerland, I wanted to read Apeirogon. It has fulfilled my expectations with information, varying viewpoints, self-questioning and humanity. Read it!

I think everyone should read this book.

In an odd coincidence I had been recommended this book by a friend and then it was chosen a my book club read. I'd had a quick look at the ambitious structure and started it slightly in awe.There are 457 pages split into 1000 very small chapters with a large section of narrative in the middleI started in May 2022 and found that I couldn't connect with it at all - plenty of people loved it though so decided to keep it and try again. The current situation in Gaza brought the book back into my mind so it seemed an appropriate time to try again - and I'm so glad I did!To begin with the book is confusing - each short chapter seems to change the flow of the story and there are many strands that are introduced - they are wide ranging but connections are clear from the start. A rhythm is established almost immediately and continues through all the horror.The two men at the heart of the book have both had daughters killed in the fighting which seems to symbolise the futility of war.These stories are true which adds to the overall sense of hopelessness and tragedy. I read a lot of fiction and was curious that this book reads like a fictional story but has an underlying gravity that cannot be ignored.The war has been ongoing for decades and is largely ignored by most people. The recent escalation (Oct 2023) has increased media attention and the rest of the world is becoming more interested. Never has this book been more relevant.I learnt a huge amount about the conflict while I was reading. It's all incredibly complicated and the author repeatedly reinforces information to emphasise, educate and promote understanding. This is done in such a beautiful, lyrical way that it stays with you.The book is full of contrasts at every level with the symbolism of the birds being a continual theme. This metaphor is used over and over in a multitude of different ways.Many times, seemingly random, strands of the story are introduced but it is never long before a connection is made. This tapestry of images and links makes this book a joy to read.The message that both of these men want to spread is extremely powerful. I came away from the book wanting them both to shout louder and for people with influence to listen more carefully. Neither has answer but they hold the beginnings of a journey towards the end - this is clear when you read their stories.When I finished I wanted to learn more about the conflict and am certainly more aware of the current news coverage.The second half of the book seems to have a more mature feel - the immediacy of the grief has moved on and the long term development of the area is considered in depth. New themes are introduced with water, silence and music coming to be fore in many of the chapters.

I started reading Apeirogon in May of one year and finished it in November of the next. The pain of the Israeli Palestinian conflict was too hard to bear even if the writing was brilliant. The episodic story telling was also unsatisfying until the continuity between episodes began to emerge as threads of woven stories that somehow connected. What is most striking about McCann’s writing are the flashes of light from his literary geometric structure, the apeirogon, that reflect moments in space and time that exist simultaneously in minute detail and disappear as soon as they appear. Through this work we enter a kind of quantum universe that is bewildering and completely tangible. An unforgettable book.