An apeirogon is a member of the mathematical family that includes pentagon, hexagon, octagon, decagon – shapes with respectively five, six, eight, 10, sides. The apeirogon has a countably infinite number of sides and even if you never quite followed your mathematics teacher’s explanation of countable infinity, that need not take from your delight in this book.
In a note at the end, the author describes it as “a hybrid novel with invention at its core … a work of storytelling”, but it would be easy to imagine that academics might want to invent a new classification for it.
The book is the story of two men from widely different backgrounds. Rami Ehlanan, son of a Holocaust survivor, is a veteran of the Israeli army whose 14-year old daughter Smadar was killed by a suicide bomber in the centre of Jerusalem. The second man is Bassam Aramin, who at 17 began a seven-year sentence as a Palestinian terrorist; 10 years after Smadar was killed, Bassam’s daughter died from a plastic bullet fired by a young Israeli soldier.
Today the two grieving fathers travel the world together, preaching peace. The central section of the book, framed by black pages at each end, contains statements from each man, extracted from their own words in interviews and public lectures. What you read between those two black pages is not fiction. If I say that both refer frequently to The Occupation, it will give a feel for their views.
Read the review by Frank O’Shea in The Age.