Apeirogon
First edition
AuthorColum McCann
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
GenreNovel
PublisherRandom House (US)
Publication date
25 February 2020
Media typePrint (hardback)
Pages480
ISBN9781400069606
Preceded byTransAtlantic 

Apeirogon is a novel by Colum McCann, published in February 2020.

The novel explores the conflict in the Middle East. It follows the story of two men who each lost a daughter. One is Palestinian, the other Israeli.

Plot

The story follows two real life figures: Rami Elhanan, an Israeli graphic designer, and Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian scholar who went to prison as a teen for attacking Israeli soldiers. Consisting of 1001 short sections, the two central figures bond over the untimely deaths of their respective daughters.

Reviews

Reviews for the book have been generally positive. Charles Finch in The Washington Post described the book as "a loving, thoughtful, grueling novel.[1] Shoiab Alam, writing in The Daily Star, hailed the novel as "a masterful and timely literary response to [the] region's neverending horrors."[2] However, the international best-selling Palestinian-American writer Susan Abulhawa calls it "Another colonialist misstep in commercial publishing" that "mystifies the colonisation of Palestine as a ‘complicated conflict’ between two equal sides".[3]

Awards

Year Award Category Result Ref
2020 Booker Prize — Longlisted [4][5]
Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger Novel Won [6]
Prix Médicis étranger Shortlisted [7]
2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence Fiction Longlisted [8]
Dalkey Literary Awards — Shortlisted [9]

References

  1. ^ Finch, Charles (10 March 2020). "TColum McCann's 'Apeirogon' takes an elliptical approach to the unending Middle East conflict". Retrieved 26 August 2020.
  2. ^ Alam, Shoiab (May 20, 2021). "Fatherhood, loss, and healing in Colum McCann's 'Apeirogon'". The Daily Star. Archived from the original on 2021-05-29. Retrieved 2021-06-20.
  3. ^ Abulhawa, Susan. "Apeirogon: Another colonialist misstep in commercial publishing". www.aljazeera.com. Retrieved 2022-02-18.
  4. ^ Doyle, Martin. "Booker Prize 2020: Colum McCann on longlist heavy with debuts and US authors". The Irish Times.
  5. ^ "Apeirogon | The Booker Prizes". thebookerprizes.com. 25 February 2020.
  6. ^ Chevilley, Philippe; Lesniak, Isabelle (4 December 2020). "Prix littéraires étrangers : le palmarès des Echos". Les Echos (in French). Retrieved 7 July 2022.
  7. ^ "Prix Médicis : Éric Reinhardt, Camille de Toledo et Hervé Le Tellier dans la deuxième sélection, Emmanuel Carrère n'y figure plus". France Info (in French). 3 October 2020. Retrieved 24 November 2020.
  8. ^ "2021 Winners". Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence. 18 October 2020. Retrieved January 12, 2021.
  9. ^ "Novel Of the Year Award Shortlist 2021". Zurich Ireland. 19 April 2021. Retrieved 5 May 2021.


Categories