In his novel, McCann does a great artistic and creative job of reaching far and wide across time and space, constantly borrowing from world literature, history, folklore and sacred texts to impact his reader with the depth of the personal tragedies that two families, one Palestinian and the other Israeli, had suffered with the loss of one lovely young daughter each in the ongoing violence of Israel’s occupation of Palestine. That made my self-assigned task doubly difficult: I equally admire the lead living Palestinian novelist and poet and have read and reviewed all of her published books except for her forthcoming “Against the Loveless World,” which is high on my current reading list. But first I read Susan Abulhawa’s critical assessment of the same book in her Al Jazeera article. My admiration and trust in the judgement of the human rights lawyer and prize-winning Palestinian writer compelled me to read the book. Till I read Raja Shehadeh’s article in Mondoweiss. I hadn’t intended to read Colum McCann’s “Apeirogon: A Novel,” (Random House, 2020) at this time.
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