Apeirogon: a shape with a countably infinite number of sides. Something boundless, endless. Like the occupation of Palestine itself, and the countless ways of seeing/telling the history of the Middle East. The book retells the story of the well-documented friendship between Bassam and Rami: two fathers - one Palestinian, one Israeli - brought together after the killings of their young daughters, years apart. One was born where the other died. Grief is their weapon for peace.
I never knew that the racist, murderous, barbarous and brutal Israeli army call themselves 'the most moral army in the world' - imagine that? Or, that your average Israeli citizen can, on the one hand, say that they don't consider Palestinians human beings and also say that they don't know what the occupation is or what is happening to the Palestinian people - imagine?
Anyhoo, McCann draws on mathematics, music, religion and art, cultural refs from Archilochus to Goethe's frozen music, to Cage, to Brancusi's birds, to try to fathom the utter despair of it all. Encyclopedic. A bit of a footslog in places but all in all, a great book.