apeirogon review new york times

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. . Do we need to hear anything else? Colum McCann Gives Voice to Grieving Fathers, One Israeli and One Palestinian. They’re numbered from 1 to 500 and then back from 500 to 1, with Chapter 1,001, the ending, located at the direct center of the book. But it’s undisputably a novel, and, to my mind, an exceedingly important one. Musical, muscular, delicate and soaring, Apeirogon is the novel for our times. . 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. . 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. . This novel, divided into 1,001 fragmentary chapters — a number alluding to “The Thousand and One Arabian Nights” — reflects the infinite complications that underlie the girls’ deaths, and the unending grief that follows. The hero makes a friend of his enemy. Rami and Bassam no longer want to silo their suffering. . 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, … “Once I thought we could never solve our conflict,” Bassam tells us; “we would continue hating each other forever, but it is not written anywhere that we have to go on killing each other. 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. 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 … NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A quite extraordinary novel. 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 … As with Bob Geldof speaking of Ethiopian famine at the time of Live Aid, McCann’s ardor is unmistakable. McCann interprets Salwa’s silence as a choice: If the journalists “could have understood her anger, if they could somehow have captured it without making a spectacle of it, she would have talked with them, but she knew, she just knew: a Muslim woman, a Palestinian, the crime of her geography. It’s one thing to read those lines in a newspaper report; it’s another to feel them from the inside. It achieves its aim by merging acts of imagination and extrapolation with historical fact. This is an early warning sign. Makes me look the way I feel.”. It achieves its aim by merging acts of imagination and extrapolation with historical fact. What can the 450 surrounding pages possibly contain? 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. ]. When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. I can do anything now.”. Each sentence has an apricot-colored scarf tied around its neck. He lives in New York City with his wife and their three children, and he is the cofounder of the global … When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. Apeirogon: The new york times bestseller . Often these phrases are his own, such as “the rim of a tightening lung.”. 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. A compendium of the conflict mixes fact with fiction to create a profound account of pain and healing . In others, we flash back to earlier points in their lives. But it’s undisputably a novel, and, to my mind, an exceedingly important one. Read honest and unbiased product reviews from our users. Rami Elhanan and Bassam Aramin both lose their daughters when the girls are still young. It achieves its aim by merging acts of imagination and extrapolation with historical fact. 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. Apeirogon A Novel (eBook) : McCann, Colum : NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A quite extraordinary novel. When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. Even so, the novel succeeds brilliantly at its larger project. ... 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. Great writing, Walt Whitman wrote, is composed of words that are “whirled like chain-shot rocks.” Enough rocks have been whirled in the Middle East. Best Sellers Today's Deals Electronics Help Gift Ideas Books New Releases Home Computers Sell. “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, Colum 'Nothing like any book you've ever read' MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM 'A quite extraordinary novel. “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. Interspersed with these narratives are fragments that might at first glance seem merely tangential: lists of migratory bird species, ballistics facts, quotes from Borges and Darwish, Israeli/Palestinian bumper-sticker mottoes (“It will not be over until we talk”), excerpts from school reports, a photograph of a defunct waterpark, stories of musical performances in Theresienstadt, an account of Philippe Petit’s high-wire walk over the Hinnom Valley (yes, fans of “Let the Great World Spin,” he’s here too), and the detailed, moment-by-moment mechanics of Christ’s crucifixion, among other things. It achieves its aim by merging acts of imagination and extrapolation with historical fact. . And, as Salwa notes, Nurit Peled-Elhanan isn’t interested in remaining silent at all. Apeirogon: A Novel (Large Print / Paperback) By Colum McCann. McCann’s book is a sensitive response to their work. . Apeirogon is an empathy engine, utterly collapsing the gulf between teller and listener. She supported what Bassam did, Rami too, Nurit as well, but she wanted only to pursue the ordinary. Every day she gets killed again and every day I sit in the ambulance, willing it to move, please move, please please please, just go, why are you staying here, let’s just go.” Rami, recounting the moments before he learns for certain that Smadar is dead, says: “You find yourself running in the streets, in and out of shops, the cafe, the ice cream store, trying to find your daughter, your child, your Princess — but she has vanished. . Reading “Apeirogon,” we move beyond an understanding of Rami and Bassam’s grief from the outside; we begin to share it. McCann takes their story and drops it to the ground, where it shatters. 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. It is a daring, humane achievement. These real-life events form the seed of “Apeirogon,” Colum McCann’s powerful and prismatic new 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! And yet, in the course of Colum McCann’s new novel Apeirogon, the reader comes to inhabit their lives, to see how fracture can be repaired at least in part. When you insist on a lot of white space between paragraphs and sometimes between single sentences, and if your work is humid, the effect can unintentionally verge on the amusing. From multiple angles, we witness the events that led to their daughters being killed. But it's undisputably a novel, and, to my mind, an exceedingly important one. About Apeirogon: A Novel NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A quite extraordinary novel. The use of words is beautiful, almost ethereal. They are tiles without grout. Apeirogon: Longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize by Colum McCann. And this novel is only tossing around pillows. 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. Colum McCann’s new novel, “Apeirogon,” is based on an uplifting true story. “Apeirogon” is an empathy engine, utterly collapsing the gulf between teller and listener. 'A quite extraordinary novel. Rami’s Smadar dies in an explosion caused by suicide bombers; Bassam’s Abir is killed by a rubber bullet. But it’s undisputably a novel, and, to my mind, an exceedingly important one. Since 2007 they’ve traveled all over the world together, speaking about what they experienced and why they believe that a peaceful end to the occupation is not only possible, but necessary. It achieves its aim by merging acts of imagination and extrapolation with historical fact. '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. An apeirogon is a polygon with an infinite yet countable number of sides. “I still sit in that ambulance every day,” Bassam tells us. Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Apeirogon: The New York Times bestseller at Amazon.com. … You go from hospital to hospital, police station to police station. Nominated for the Booker Prize 2020. By the time Abir was shot, Elhanan and Aramin were close friends. It does far more than make an argument for peace; it is, itself, an agent of change. When we learn, for example, the names of 36 species of migratory birds that traverse an ancient and perilous flight path over Israel every year, then study the design of the slingshots boys used thousands of years ago to bring those birds down — and then learn that Bassam was in the habit of slinging stones in protest before he threw the grenade that landed him in prison, and finally that the shooter who killed Abir thought he was under attack by protesters throwing stones — we understand that the earlier sections weren’t really about birds or slingshots, but about the millions of factors — geographic, historical, political — that lead to a senseless death. Both Chapter 500s consist of the fathers’ first-person accounts of their losses and their paths toward activism. 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. He is a well-meaning man. I learned some new ones, besides Apeirogon. The new loss made them brothers. McCann has registered his answer, one so powerful that it impels us to find our own. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A quite extraordinary novel. Colum McCann’s New Novel Makes a Good-Intentioned Collage Out of Real Tragedy, Colum McCann, whose new novel is “Apeirogon.”. It’s as if the author were gunning for the Paulo Coelho Chair in Maudlin Schlock. . Apeirogon is an empathy engine, utterly collapsing the gulf between teller and listener. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. It achieves its aim by merging acts of imagination and extrapolation with historical fact. In an author’s note at the front of this novel, McCann writes: “We live our lives, suggested Rilke, in widening circles that reach out across the entire expanse.” McCann has a gift for quoting others at their most flatulent: “The only interesting thing is to live, said Mitterand”; “Hertzl wrote: If you divide death by life, you will find a circle.”, For added effect, McCann repeats lines he likes, such as the Mitterand quote, again and again. McCann’s is that, even in his best novels, such as the National Book Award-winning “Let the Great World Spin” (2009), his work can be humorless and self-important. 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. 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. 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