For decades now the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been in the news and on our minds. It is certainly not the most harrowing conflict that humanity has known since the end of the Second World War, nor is it the most deadly or atrocious. Nevertheless, countless pages of geopolitical reflection and narrative have been written about it. Meanwhile, it has evolved, year after year, as national identities, as well as narratives built around conflicts, keep changing over time.
To underline only the most evident aspect of this conflict, the religious dimension was hardly present in either the first Zionist movement or the Palestinian nationalist organizations of the 1960s or 1970s. And now an Irish author, Colum McCann, has written a book that approaches it from an original perspective and looks at the conflict in depth.
The book has an enigmatic title, Apeirogon, a term that indicates a geometric figure with an infinite number of sides. It is neither a novel nor a work of fiction, neither a work of history nor an academic essay; it does not claim to offer solutions or explanations. It claims nothing: this is its strength.
|
© Union of Catholic Asian News
2023
