BOOK GROUP
September 1, 6598 From 12:00 am to 12:00 amJoin Rabbi Mason-Barkin and the CBI Book Group in reading Collum McCann’s extraordinary novel Apeirogon. We will gather for discussion on Tuesday, January 18th at 7 PM on ZOOM “Bassam Aramin is Palestinian. Rami Elhanan is Israeli. They inhabit a world of conflict that colors every aspect of their lives, from the roads they are allowed to drive on to the schools their children attend to the checkpoints, both physical and emotional, they must negotiate. But their lives, however, circumscribed, are upended one after the other: first, Rami’s thirteen-year-old daughter, Smadar, becomes the victim of suicide bombers; a decade later, Bassam’s ten-year-old daughter, Abir, is killed by a rubber bullet. Rami and Bassam had been raised to hate one another. And yet, when they learn of each other’s stories, they recognize the loss that connects them. Together they attempt to use their grief as a weapon for peace—and with their one small act, start to permeate what has for generations seemed an impermeable conflict. This extraordinary novel is the fruit of a seed planted when the novelist Colum McCann met the real Bassam and Rami on a trip with the non-profit organization Narrative 4. … The result is an ambitious novel, crafted out of a universe of fictional and non-fictional material, with these fathers’ moving story at its heart.”