![Dean Frederick speaks virtually with Colum McCann](/sites/g/files/omnuum5526/files/styles/hwp_21_9__1920x825/public/2025-04/PFTC_Apeirogon_4.jpg?itok=cSbdobnG) # People of Faith in Times of Crisis: Apeirogon by Colum McCann Concludes HDS Community Book Read April 23, 2025 [ Tyler Sprouse ](/people/tyler-sprouse) On April 8, Harvard Divinity School hosted the third and final session of [HDS Dean Marla F. Frederick’s](https://www.hds.harvard.edu/about/dean) three-part series, “People of Faith in Times of Crisis,” with a powerful conclusion that brought literature and lived experience into vivid conversation focused on the novel *Apeirogon* by *The New York Times* bestselling novelist and National Book award-winner, Colum McCann, who joined the conversation by Zoom. Throughout the book, McCann gives voice to the grief of two fathers, Bassam Aramin and Rami Elhanan, both of whom—in real life—lost their daughters, ten-year-old Abir and seventeen-year-old Smadar, in separate acts of violence that erupted in the West Bank and Jerusalem. In the novel, Aramin, a Palestinian, and Elhanan, an Israeli, meet through the Parents Circle–Families Forum (PCFF), a joint Israeli-Palestinian organization of more than 600 bereaved individuals committed to reconciliation. Aramin and Elhanan unite in a common mission: to share their stories of loss with the world, using their grief as a catalyst for peace. As McCann shared, the idea of writing *Apeirogon* was born after hearing Aramin and Elhanan speak in November 2015. On the penultimate day of a trip to the region with his nonprofit, Narrative 4, a global organization that encourages young people to use storytelling to inspire change in their communities, McCann was invited to a meeting of the Parents Circle. “I walked into a room in Beit Jala and these two men, Rami Elhanan and Bassam Aramin, began to tell us their story,” said McCann. “Within 20 minutes of hearing them speak, I simply burst into tears. It was almost like somebody reached through my rib cage and wrung out my heart.” For the Dublin-born writer, the emotions stemmed, in part, from his own experience growing up in Ireland during The Troubles, a 30-year period of conflict. “That release of emotion had to do with a lot of things I had seen in and remembered from my childhood, spending time with my mother’s family in Northern Ireland,” McCann said. “I have been involved in investigating the peace process there, as well. All these emotions welled up when I heard these men.” After the meeting, Aramin and Elhanan wrote McCann a note on a green napkin, a message that stuck with the novelist as he travelled back home to New York: “Colum, harness the power of your grief.” Though initially unsure whether he should write this book, friends and loved ones ultimately persuaded him to tell their story. When he told Aramin and Elhanan, both men agreed and shared their own hopes for the literary work. “Both of them insisted that if I could capture even a portion, a sentence, of their grief—and if I could communicate that to people—they would be immensely grateful,” said McCann. “They saw the potential for the book to help them in their mission.” A splintered novel comprising 1,001 fragmentary cantos (a number that echoes the ancient collection of Middle Eastern folktales, *One Thousand and One Nights*, a work that becomes a symbol in the novel), the flow of the book mirrors the definition of its titular word, “apeirogon”: an object with a countably infinite number of sides. For McCann, the title is apt for the novel’s subject matter. “I found the word when I was writing about the Irish peace process,” said McCann. “I thought that it wasn’t necessarily a two-sided thing, but a polygon. I think the word speaks to how I feel about this conflict.” Composed of both fictional and non-fictional accounts, the story situates the defining tragedies of Aramin’s and Elhanan’s lives within a seemingly infinite network of connotations and historical context. Spanning numerous time periods in a non-linear fashion, the novel reflects its protagonists’ respective experiences of grief over time. For McCann, blurring the lines between fact and fiction was a necessary feature of telling this story. “The reason I wrote this as a novel is that I wanted to be in their heads, to help the readers feel what was happening in the pulse of the moment,” said McCann. “It was my job to be a ventriloquist of the heart, so to speak, as well as be true to the texture of the lived experience of both men. “In the end, for me,” he continued, “the true facts of contemporary experience are the ineffable things, those things around which we can’t put a fact, whether that be love and pride and pity and sacrifice, history, violence, and all those things. To me, that is where fiction finds its honor and grace.” At the heart of the novel is a phrase, spoken by both men in their attempts to wield their grief for peace: “It will not be over until we talk.” As McCann shared in a Q&A session with HDS community members, this refrain is the driving force for Aramin and Elhanan. “Their message is that we must stay alive, we must talk, and it will not be over until we talk—the elephant in the room being occupation, of course, for both,” said McCann. “Both men believe that the occupation must end for any talks to properly be allowed.” Ultimately, for McCann, both Aramin and Elhanan are a model of coming together across difference. “One of the things that Rami and Bassam tried to do is to understand their differences, to bridge their differences,” said McCann. “What they say fundamentally—and I hope this comes across in the novel—is that we don't have to love one another. We don't even have to like one another, though we hope that we could. But we must understand one another, or else we are doomed.” Dean Frederick connected the conversation about Aramin and Elhanan to a [discussion](https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2024/09/two-bereaved-mothers-who-know-price-of-war-work-for-peace/) she moderated at the beginning of the 2024-25 academic year, when Layla Alsheikh and Robi Damelin—two members of the Parents Circle—spoke to the HDS community about the deaths of their respective sons and their shared pursuit of reconciliation and peace. “This conversation is serendipitous because we started this year off, even before this series began, with two mothers—one from Israel, one from Palestine—who are part of Parents Circle,” said Frederick. “The Palestinian mother, Layla Alsheikh, said, ‘I wish that people were neither pro-Palestine nor pro-Israel. I wish that they were pro-peace, because I don't want any other mother to have to experience the type of grief that I've experienced.’” ## Read more about the People of Faith in Times of Crisis series: [### Session One: Yossi Klein Halevi ](https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/02/14/hds-community-book-read-and-discussion-aims-foster-dialogue-across-difference) [### Session Two: Raja Shehadeh ](https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2025/02/26/beyond-differences-book-discussion-examines-power-friendship-pursuing-peace-justice) See also:- [ Conflict and Peace ](/discover-stories-about/conflict-and-peace) - [ Literature ](/topic-tags/literature) - [ Peace ](/topic-tags/peace)