Apeirogon

Bassam Aramin is Palestinian and Rami Elhanan is Israeli. Both live amid a conflict that shapes every part of daily life, from which roads they may travel to which schools their daughters, Abir and Smadar, attend. Children on either side of the wall throw stones at one another.

Their lives are changed for good when ten-year-old Abir is killed by a rubber bullet fired to disperse an unruly crowd. They change again when thirteen-year-old Smadar is killed by suicide bombers. When Bassam and Rami come to know each other's stories and the loss they share, they become part of a far larger story that spans centuries and continents.

Colum McCann's novel, set in Israel and Palestine, sits on the border between fiction and nonfiction. Bassam and Rami are real men, and their own words appear in the narrative. It is built from thousands of moments and images that gather toward a single powerful close.