 First edition | |
| Author | Colum McCann |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Novel |
| Publisher | Random House (US) |
Publication date | 25 February 2020 |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 480 |
| ISBN | 9781400069606 |
| Preceded by | TransAtlantic |
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.
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 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]
| 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] |
Meir Shalev was an Israeli writer and newspaper columnist for the daily Yedioth Ahronoth. Shalev's books have been translated into 26 languages.
Annie Thérèse Blanche Ernaux is a French writer who was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory". Her literary work, mostly autobiographical, maintains close links with sociology.
Mohammed Moulessehoul, better known by the pen name Yasmina Khadra, is an Algerian author living in France, who writes in French. One of the most famous Algerian novelists in the world, he has written almost 40 novels, and has published in more than 50 countries. Khadra has often explored Algerian and other Arab countries' civil wars, depicting Muslim conflicts and reality, the attraction of radical Islamism to those alienated by the incompetence and hypocrisy of politicians, and conflicts between East and West. In his several writings on the Algerian war, he has exposed the regime and the fundamentalist opposition as the joint guilty parties in the country's tragedy.
Colum McCann is an Irish writer of literary fiction. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, and now lives in New York. He is the co-founder and President of Narrative 4, an international empathy education nonprofit. He is also a Thomas Hunter Writer in Residence at Hunter College, New York. He is known as an international writer who believes in the "democracy of storytelling." Among his numerous honors are the U.S National Book Award, the Dublin Literary Prize, several major European awards, and an Oscar nomination.
Palestinian literature refers to the Arabic language novels, short stories and poems produced by Palestinians. Forming part of the broader genre of Arabic literature, contemporary Palestinian literature is often characterized by its heightened sense of irony and the exploration of existential themes and issues of identity. References to the subjects of resistance to occupation, exile, loss, and love and longing for homeland are also common.
This is an incomplete bibliography of the Arab–Israeli conflict.
The Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger is a French literary prize created in 1948. It is awarded yearly in two categories: Novel and Essay for books translated into French.
Ruth Gilligan is an Irish writer, journalist and university lecturer, born in Dublin.
Nathan Thrall is an American author, essayist, and journalist based in Jerusalem. Thrall is the author of A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy, which was named a best book of 2023 by over ten publications, including The New Yorker, The Economist, Time, the Financial Times, The New Republic, The Millions, Mother Jones, The Forward, Booklist, The New Statesman, and The Irish Times, and was selected as a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. His first book,The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine, was published by Metropolitan/Henry Holt in 2017. He is a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, the London Review of Books, and The New York Review of Books.
Susan Abulhawa is a Kuwaiti-born Palestinian-American writer and human rights activist and animal rights advocate. She is the author of several books, and the founder of a non-governmental organization, Playgrounds for Palestine. She lives in Pennsylvania. Her first novel, Mornings in Jenin, was translated into 32 languages and sold more than a million copies. The sales and reach of her debut novel made Abulhawa the most widely read Palestinian author of all time. Her second novel, The Blue Between Sky And Water, was sold in 19 languages before its release, and was published in English in 2015. Against the Loveless World, her third novel, was released in August 2020, also to critical acclaim.
Let the Great World Spin is a novel by Colum McCann set mainly in New York City in the United States. The book won the 2009 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and the 2011 International Dublin Literary Award, one of the most lucrative literary prizes in the world. Its title comes from the poem "Locksley Hall" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
Mornings in Jenin, is a novel by author Susan Abulhawa.
Footnotes in Gaza is a journalistic graphic narrative by Joe Sacco about bloody incidents between Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza during the Suez Crisis. It was published in 2009 by Henry Holt and Company in the U.S. and Jonathan Cape in the UK.
Yishai Sarid is an Israeli author, novelist and lawyer.
Miko Peled is an Israeli-American activist, author, and karate instructor. He is author of the books The General’s Son: The Journey of an Israeli in Palestine, published in 2012, and Injustice: The Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five, published in 2017. He is also an international speaker.
TransAtlantic is a novel by Colum McCann, published in June 2013.
The Grand prix des lectrices de Elle is a French literary prize awarded by readers of Elle magazine.
Hala Alyan is a Palestinian-American writer, poet, and clinical psychologist who specializes in trauma, addiction, and cross-cultural behavior. Her writing covers aspects of identity and the effects of displacement, particularly within the Palestinian diaspora. She is also known for acting in the short films I Say Dust andTallahassee.
Rami Elhanan is an Israeli graphic designer and peace activist.
Fatima Al-Zahra'a Shbair is a Palestinian photojournalist based in Gaza City, Palestine. She won a Prix de la Ville de Perpignan Rémi Ochlik award by Visa pour l'image in 2021 and a World Press Photo award in 2022.
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