Apeirogon

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERLONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZESHORTLISTED FOR THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARDSHORTLISTED FOR THE PRIX FEMINA AND THE PRIX MEDICISSHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLDSBORO BOOKS GLASS BELL AWARDWINNER OF THE PRIX DU MEILLEUR LIVRES ETRANGERWINNER OF THE 2020 NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARDS CHOSEN AS A BOOK OF 2020 BY THE SUNDAY TIMES, OBSERVER, GUARDIAN, i PAPER, FINANCIAL TIMES, NEW STATESMAN, SCOTSMAN, IRISH TIMES, BBC.COM, WATERSTONES.COM‘A wondrous book. It left me hopeful; this is its gift’ Elizabeth Strout‘An empathy engine ... It is, itself, an agent of change’ New York Times Book Review‘A quite extraordinary novel’ Kamila ShamsieHow do we continue living once we have lost our reason to live?Rami and Bassam live in the city of Jerusalem – but exist worlds apart, divided by an age-old conflict. And yet they have one thing in common. Both are fathers; both are fathers of daughters – and both daughters are now lost.When Rami and Bassam meet, and tell one another the story of their grief, the most unexpected thing of all happens: they become best of friends. And their stories become one story, a story with the power to heal – and the power to change the world.‘The book goes anywhere and everywhere. It is a delirious and thrilling improvisation, a jazz solo spun out of that meeting … A spectacular structure of stories about everything’ Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times

A work that is both spectacularly inventive and grounded in brutal fact. It is about grief and forgiveness, about family and politics. If you can read it without sobbing, you’re a monster, A profound account of pain and healing, Colum McCann’s transcendent book is full of hundreds of thought-provoking, emotional segments … McCann turns these haunting true stories into engrossing fiction, and he does so with poetic power, Apeirogon is an empathy engine, utterly collapsing the gulf between teller and listener ... It achieves its aim by merging acts of imagination and extrapolation with historical fact. But it’s undisputably a novel, and, to my mind, an exceedingly important one. It does far more than make an argument for peace; it is, itself, an agent of change, Nothing like any book you’ve ever read ... Think of discovering an entirely unprecedented, and profoundly true, narrative form. Think about feeling that the very idea of the novel, of what it can be and what it’s capable of containing, has been expanded, forever ... All I can really tell you is, read McCann’s book. It’s an important book

Colum McCann is the author of six novels and three collections of stories. Apeirogon was a New York Times bestseller, longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Prix Femina and Prix Medicis. His novel TransAtlantic, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2013, and Let the Great World Spin won the National Book Award and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been published in forty languages and has received many international honours, including a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, election to the Irish arts academy and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2010 Best Foreign Novel Award in China and an Oscar nomination. He is the co-founder of the non-profit global story exchange organisation, Narrative 4, and he teaches at the MFA program in Hunter College. He was born in Dublin and lives in New York. colummccann.com

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