A tour-de-force, sure to be regarded as one of this year’s best English-language novels.
Rami Elhanan is an Israeli whose 13-year-old daughter, Smadar, was killed by suicide bombers in Jerusalem. Bassam Aramin is a Palestinian whose 10-year-old daughter, Abir, was shot by border police. These two men are best friends, who have travelled the world talking of their losses and of peace, through their group, Parents Circle.
Irish-American author Colum McCann has taken these men’s stories (with their permission) and woven them into a novel of extraordinary breadth and depth. Part non-fiction, part imagination, part history lesson, Apeirogon stretches, yet never breaks, the genre.
An apeirogon is a mathematical concept: a shape with a countably infinite number of sides. McCann’s book takes on that shape: you could almost start reading anywhere and in any order, resulting in a story both the same and different. Mathematical concepts weave through the work, as do birds, roads, water and the landscape of Israel and Palestine. This is a complex work, yet the unfurling of it occurs with engaging ease. The reader never loses sight of the two bereaved fathers at the heart of the narrative.
Structurally, the novel is broken into short chunks: some a page or two long, others just one sentence, or even one phrase. In this, it shares some similarities with Edoardo Albinati’s The Catholic School. Sometimes phrases reappear in unexpected places; surprising connections are made between themes, objects, or places. McCann likes to throw in the odd list as well: bird species, trees, alternative names for the same thing. Yet somehow, he structures what could sound like a mash-up into a perfectly varying rhythm. Not a word is out of place.
Apeirogon gently finds the personal in the political and the political in the personal. This is one of the most respectful, yet uncompromising portraits of contemporary Israel-Palestine written in English. McCann believes in the power of storytelling to build empathy, and this belief forms the foundation of his organization Narrative 4, as well as under-pinning his work.
A literary masterclass, a work of passion and poetry, and above all, a relentlessly great read, this novel is everything.
McCann has previously been long-listed for the Booker Prize: surely this will be the work that sees him on the short-list, if not the winner.
Reviewed by Tracey Korsten
Twitter: @TraceyKorsten
Distributed by: Bloomsbury Australia
Released: February 2020
RRP: $37.99
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