Apeirogon

 By Colum McCann

Colum Mc Cann is Irish. He knows what it means  violence and war between communities .

His book is a beautiful, remarkable and important novel, a profound prayer for peace.

« APEIROGON » is based on a real-life Israeli-Palestinian friendship forged in grief.

McCann himself met both men :

Rami, the Israeli, whose 14-year-old daughter Smadar was killed by two Palestinian suicide bombers in Jerusalem.

Bassam, the Palestinian, whose 10-year-old daughter Abir was shot with a rubber bullet fired by an Israeli soldier .

In this book, never sad, the writer analyses the nature of violence and cruelty and the random nature of death.

McCann quotes  Einstein ‘s moving letter to Freud asking whether it would be possible to deliver humankind from the savagery of hate and war. Freud’s answer is quite pessimistic : «  There is no such likelihood …..to suppress humanity’s most aggressive tendencies. Humanity has an active instinct for hatred  and destruction. »

How true those words sound nowadays !

McCann explores the lives lived on both sides of the divide between Israel and Palestine, a divide created by geography, politics, religion.  He has managed in this book to create empathy for the characters and understanding of their situation.

In a narration full of humanity, he tells us how Rami and Bassam will eventually find their way to forgiveness and understanding.

« Anything  that creates emotional ties between human beings inevitably counteracts war, hence this book » says McCann

This book is also rich in the many ways it refers to History, sciences, music, literature, poetry. It is also threaded through  by a long meditation on birds and  their migration routes fraught by peril and obstacles. Culminating with the description of Philippe Petit ‘s walk on a tight rope between East and West Jerusalem in 1987, when a white dove settled on his balancing pole. What a symbol !

The structure of the book is complex and even puzzling in the beginning : small paragraphs with seemingly no connexion between them eventually connect little by little.

The title itself refers to a complex geometric shape with a countably infinite number of sides. A metaphor for the complex Israeli-Palestinian question. So many stories of tragedies, of wars, of frustrations and despair, stretching back into the past, through the present and off into the future.

How did we feel about the book ?

We all found it beautiful, thought-provoking, full of humanity and very instructive in many aspects.

For some, it was a bit like Utopia : how can we really reconcile waring factions through understanding ?

But the world definitely needs  some kind of idealism to drive us forward !

                                                                                     Anne Van Calster

                                                                                                October 2020