Conversation with Colum McCann and Mercè Folch

Over the course of his literary trajectory, Colum McCann has navigated different scenarios of social and political conflict through the language of fiction. Being recognized by the public and the critics equally, behind his literary power lies an investigative voice and a commitment to the task of telling stories as a way of weaving bonds of solidarity between communities. Apeirogon (Random House, 2020) is his latest novel, a hybrid work where journalistic training and literary vocation merge to explain the true story of two fathers, a Palestinian and an Israeli, linked by the loss of their daughters in the conflict. The author proposes a journey through a thousand and one vignettes, an original literary strategy that allows us to enter fully into the suffering that the words hold and to know in all its complexity the landscape of conflict in which they are rooted. In this session, the New York-based Irish author will talk with Mercè Folch about the power of fiction to give voice to these stories and tell us about the conflict from perspectives often absent in media discourses.