Apeirogon: Longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize

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A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD SHORTLISTED FOR THE PRIX FEMINA AND THE PRIX MEDICIS SHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLDSBORO BOOKS GLASS BELL AWARD WINNER OF THE PRIX DU MEILLEUR LIVRES ETRANGER WINNER 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 Shamsie ______________________ How 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

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

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 * Observer * A profound account of pain and healing * Guardian * 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 * independent.co.uk * 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 * New York Times Book Review * 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 -- MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM Now you have to read Apeirogon ... Delirious and thrilling, spectacular * Sunday Times * Weaves documentary and imagination into its tough physical fabric . .. Frequently beautiful ... Often dazzles ... At the core of this fractal fiction is a simple, radiant myth: "The hero makes a friend of his enemy" * Economist * A jagged, fractured, teeming novel ... Apeirogon is a daring structural feat, a conspicuously elaborate and multivalent piece of novelistic engineering ... The distilled and fractured form has a glistening poetry * Times Literary Supplement * In the spirit of Picasso's Guernica, Apeirogon reminds us that such incandescent art evokes humility and light in the face of oppression and loss * O Magazine * A loving, thoughtful, grueling novel * Washington Post * Powerful novel about the shared grief of a Palestinian and Israeli * Sunday Times, Books of 2020 * The tale of a friendship between an Israeli and a Palestinian ... Composed of 1,001 chapters, it has won effusive praise from early readers * New Statesman * Colum McCann seems to shape-shift with each new book; Apeirogon examines the friendship between Israeli and Palestinian fathers who have each lost children to the conflict * Financial Times, 2020 visions: the year ahead in books * His most ambitious work yet, chronicling the human cost of the Israeli Palestinian conflict in a tale of love and loss that crosses fiction and non-fiction * RTE Guide * A novel inspired by a true story about two men - one Israeli and one Palestinian - who both lost daughters in the conflict and who form an unexpected friendship * Scotsman * McCann's epic, involving novel follows the slow-blooming friendship between two men, an Israeli and a Palestinian, linked by the loss of their daughters * i paper * The advance word on this novel suggests a level of ambition we may not have encountered yet from the Dublin native. It explores the Palestine-Israel conflict through the unlikely friendship of two men from either side * Irish Examiner, 20 Books for 2020 * McCann's epic involving novel follows the slow-blooming friendship between two men, an Israeli and Palestinian, linked by the loss of their daughters -- Sarah Hughes * i, Books of 2020 * A glorious storytelling hybrid ... Apeirogon is a brilliant novel, formally intriguing, profoundly human -- BBC.com A masterpiece of characterisation and subtle political commentary -- Waterstones.com Teeming with gorgeous prose; a sweeping look at the paradoxical relationship between history and private life; a penetrating examination of the deficiencies and marvels of the human spirit ... Propulsive, muscular, swerving through details of life - real and imagined - with urgency, borne along on prose that is some of McCann's finest, fully displaying his powers as a storyteller of just about supernatural ability. This book will break your heart and make you rethink how storytelling works -- TEA OBREHT A quite extraordinary novel. 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 SHAMSIE Distinguished by empathy and intelligence, this book marks a new threshold of writing ... Apeirogon will have a strong effect on all those who read it and, remarkably, could lead to great consequences for the future of this place. Sometimes books can do this -- RAJA SHEHADAH A work of incredible magnitude. McCann finds the emotional accuracy, the sensitivity, and the beauty to tell the heartbreaking reality of life in Israel-Palestine, while allowing readers a glimmer of necessary hope. It is greater than a novel in more than one sense, and will both touch and enrich readers, wherever they live and whatever they know about the region -- ASSAF GAVRON Colum McCann loves a high-wire act, and Apeirogon is a powerful, political tightrope walk of a novel. It's the story of modern Israel and the story of modern Palestine. This beautiful, deeply felt book is first and foremost an extraordinary act of listening -- NATHAN ENGLANDER Distinguished by empathy and intelligence, this book marks a new threshold of writing ... Apeirogon will have a strong effect on all those who read it and, remarkably, could lead to great consequences for the future ... Sometimes books can do this -- RAJA SHEHADAH The latest novel from the National Book Award winner blends fiction with history to examine how two men channel their grief into political power as they become advocates for peace in the Middle East * TIME Magazine *