

it allows us to inhabit the interiority of human beings who are not ourselves. Apeirogon is an empathy engine, utterly collapsing the gulf between teller and listener. Reading Apeirogon we move beyond an understanding of Rami and Bassam’s grief from the outside we begin to share it.

the novel succeeds brilliantly at its larger project. McCann’s brilliant act of novel-making builds a wholly believable and infinitely faceted reality around Rami’s and Bassam’s first-person accounts, a rich and comprehensive context that allows us into the fathers’ experiences, their histories, their minds. They’re also the most intimate pages of the book, and the most difficult to read.

these fathers’ grief-stricken voices are already part of the public consciousness. This novel, divided into 1,001 fragmentary chapters.reflects the infinite complications that underlie the girls’ deaths, and the unending grief that follows.
