Colum McCann „Apeirogon“

Colum McCann, an Irish writer living in the USA, has received numerous awards for his novels so far. “Apeirogon” is his latest novel and has been shortlisted for the “Friedenspreis des deutschen Buchhandels”.

“Apeirogon” is about the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East. We learn about Bassam, a Palestinian whose family was evicted by Israeli police forces. He spent some years in jail where he was tortured and discovered his interest in the Holocaust.

Rami is happily married and successful and one of the few Israelis who speaks out against the occupation of Palestinian territory.  Both Rami and Bassam are united in their grief of having lost their daughters. Rami’s daughter Smadar was killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber when she was thirteen and Bassam’s daughter Abir was shot by an Israeli soldier without any obvious reason. These two fathers have become friends touring Israel and other countries to tell the stories of their loss and to promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians by ending the occupation of the West Bank.

The book is divided into 1001 chapters of different length referring to the stories of 1001 Arabian Nights. Some of these chapters tell the story of the two friends and some explore various events and observations that are sometimes difficult to connect to the two characters like the story of the high-wire walker who crossed from Palestine to Israel or the observations about the behaviour of migratory birds.

“Apeirogon”, the title of the novel, is a mathematical term for an object of an “observably infinite number of sides” – a well chosen image for the Israeli Palestinian conflict and McCann’s strategy to link all kind of seemingly unconnected observations to the real-life story of Rami and Bassam’s friendship and commitment.

A moving book inspiring hope that we may be able to solve some of our conflicts when we learn to talk about our grief and put more stress on our common experience than on the issues that divide us.

A challenging read but worth it!

Prof. Münzer-Jordan

Zurück