The vessel filled, drip by drip, and marked the passage of short amounts of time. Stone bowls were fashioned with holes in the bottom so that the water fell through a vessel below. Music-from Prince to John Cage.ĭo the references work? Here’s an example of a random entry: “The ancient Greeks used sandals o tell the time during the day and clepsydras, or water clocks, at night. New methods we humans dream up to maim and kill each other. McCann’s recurring themes throughout the novel are fascinating. (But it’s more powerful, I think, when you come across it. You might feel more oriented to the story. If you don’t want that jumpy, disoriented feeling from the opening pages, skip ahead to “chapter” 500 in the middle of the book and read this big ten-page chunk first. We want to believe in this friendship, that it will make a difference. The two men join the Parents Circle, a group that unites in sorrow and seeks a peaceful resolution to the centuries of fighting.

They both lost young daughters, violently, in the conflict. The story is based on a real-life friendship between a Palestinian, Bassam Aramin, and an Israeli, Rami Elhanan. In its review, The Guardian wrote: “The title is taken from the mathematical term for an object of an ‘observably infinite number of sides,’ a shape that serves as a model for a new way of thinking about a conflict that is too often reduced to simple, opposed positions.”Īpeirogon is about the Middle East. Then, you start letting the pieces come at you and stop worrying. You might struggle at first to put the pieces together in your head. The audio book version, read by McCann, is brilliant. The reading takes some getting to use to. It’s as if Colum McCann wrote a novel, smashed it into a thousand pieces, picked those pieces back up at random, and published them in a haphazard fashion. Apeirogon is a reading experience like no other.

Apeirogon book review