PositiveNewsdayRami and Bassam met through their shared participation in this bitter tradition, and from it came the friendship that inspired McCann to write this book. Around their life histories, the author fashions his apeirogon, a shape with a \'countably infinite number of sides.\' The \'countable\' part of it adds up to 1,001, perhaps fiction’s most auspicious number. In 1,001 sections, many as short as a single sentence, McCann ruminates on the fates of these families as a way of grasping the situation in Israel and Palestine — one that is often thought of as having only two sides ... Less like a traditional novel than a long braided essay, the novel traces a day in the lives of Rami and Bassam. It shares the dangers of their ordinary errands. It perseverates with them on their daughter’s deaths.
