Why Should Colum McCann Win the Dublin Literary Award 2021?

Colum’s McCann’s Apeirogon has been short listed for the prestigious Dublin Literary Award and should win it. This is not to denigrate the other fine nominees; it is simply recognising the contribution Apeirogon makes to literature. If he wins, he will be the first author to win it twice (his first win being with Let the Great World Spin in 2011).

This novel is an outstanding achievement, one that breaks new ground on what we think a novel can be. On the cover Gabriel Byrne calls it McCann’s ‘masterpiece’ and this is not an understatement. If he were not already there, it puts him on a par with Joyce, Yeats and Beckett.

Colum McCann has been quoted as saying (to paraphrase) that a novel should take on something epic while keeping it small. This novel achieves just that. At its heart is a story of two grieving fathers who channel their grief into trying to achieve peace through their organisation, Combatants for Peace. On the epic level the novel takes on the complex Palestinian / Israeli conflict.

The novel is a mix of real-life stories and some dramatisation – what the author calls a hybrid novel. It is the ‘emotional texture’ and the heart of the story that he looks for, instead of hard facts (McCann, interview with Waterstones, February 2020). McCann focuses the novel on the lives of Rami Elhanan, an Israeli and Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian, who both lose their daughters in the conflict. Ten-year-old Abir Aramin dies after being shot by a rubber bullet, while thirteen-year-old Smadar Elhanan dies during a suicide bombing incident. The fathers harness their grief and share their stories around the world. They hope to wake the world up to the reality of the horrors of the conflict, with the aim of a peaceful solution. Their story is moving and powerful.

But it is in the structure of the novel that we find what is groundbreaking. Let’s begin with the title. An apeirogon is a shape with an accountably infinite number of sides. In an interview with Waterstones McCann tells us he was drawn to this word as the title because is represented the idea that there are so many aspects to this conflict. He believes we are all involved, all complicit in a certain way. And reading the novel, I felt that. I wondered how I couldn’t have known more about the Israeli / Palestinian conflict, how it could have gone over my head so much.

Every good novel should make us think and every great novel should make us soul search. Apeirogon does that with aplomb. Your understanding of the conflict and the lives of those who live there grows with every page but at no time does this feel like a history lesson. It is made real and simple; McCann taking the highly complex issues here and distilling them down to the human cost, on both sides, of ‘occupation’. In keeping with the title, you find yourself wondering at your own complicity. It is disturbing but eye opening.

Some may be put off by the structure of the book itself. Some have mentioned to me that they found it jarring but maybe that’s exactly the point. It is written in 1,001 chapters with the 1,001^st occurring in the middle of the book. In these chapters McCann intersperses the stories of the father and their daughters with facts and asides on all sorts of things like bird migration, bomb making and the bizarre legend of St Symeon the Stylite of Aleppo, who spent 37 years living on a pillar in the 4^th Century. The range of topics covered is mind blowing but it is in a modern way that reflects the way our minds skip over topics and connections. If you can relax into it and allow the emotion of the novel to be the overriding pleasure, then the tangents will no longer bother you. Embrace the confusion – it is intentional and effective. And above all it is genius.

This story will stay with you for a long time and Bassam’s words will haunt you: ‘If we don’t know each other above ground the only place we will know each other is below ground.’ The purpose of these men’s stories is to open us up to truly looking at each other and knowing each other. Only then can we reach an understanding of the other and only then will we have peace. The purpose of this novel is to bring us to a new understanding of how we can tell and listen to stories. McCann puts the world into this book in order to help us know that every story is a world.

For the full list of short listed novels, visit the Dublin Literary Award 2021 Shortlist.