Showing results by author "Colum McCann" in All Categories

New York, August 1974: a man is walking in the sky. Between the newly built Twin Towers, the man twirls through the air. Far below, the lives of complete strangers spin towards each other: Corrigan, a radical Irish monk working in the Bronx; Claire, a delicate Upper East Side housewife reeling from the death of her son; Lara, a drug-addled young artist; Gloria, solid and proud despite decades of hardship; Tillie, a hooker who used to dream of a better life and Jazzlyn, her beautiful daughter raised on promises that reach beyond the skyline of New York.

Rami Elhanan and Bassam Aramin live near one another - yet they exist worlds apart. Rami is Israeli. Bassam is Palestinian. Both men have lost their daughters. Rami’s 13-year-old girl, Smadar, was killed by a suicide bomber while out shopping with her friends. Bassam’s 10-year-old daughter, Abir, was shot and killed by a member of the border police outside her school. There was a candy bracelet in her pocket she hadn’t had time to eat yet. The men become the best of friends.

Published to coincide the with 50th anniversary of the Israel occupation of the West Bank, an anthology that explores the human cost of the conflict there as witnessed by such notable writers as Colum McCann, Colm Toibin, Dave Eggers, Madeleine Thien, Eimear McBride and Taiye Selasi and editors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman.

Anthony Fennell, a journalist, is in pursuit of a story buried at the bottom of the sea: the network of tiny fibre-optic tubes that carry the world’s information across the ocean floor - and what happens when they break. So he has travelled to Cape Town to board the George Lecointe, a cable repair vessel captained by Chief of Mission John Conway. Conway is a talented engineer and fearless freediver - and Fennell is quickly captivated by this mysterious, unnerving man and his beautiful partner, Zanele.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Nathan Walker comes to New York City to take the most dangerous job in the country: digging the tunnel far beneath the Hudson that will carry trains from Brooklyn to Manhattan. In the bowels of the riverbed, the workers—black, white, Irish and Italian—dig together, the darkness erasing all differences. But above ground, the men keep their distance until a dramatic accident on a bitter winter's day welds a bond between Walker and his fellow workers that will both bless and curse three generations.

It is a cold day in January when J. Mendelssohn wakes in his Upper East Side apartment. Old and frail, he is entirely reliant on the help of his paid carer, and as he waits for the heating to come on, the clacking of the pipes stirs memories of the past; of his childhood in Lithuania and Dublin, of his distinguished career as a judge, and of his late wife, Eileen. Later he leaves the house to meet his son Elliot for lunch, and when Eliot departs mid-meal, Mendelssohn continues eating alone as the snow falls heavily outside. Moments after he leaves the restaurant, he is attacked.

"Apeirogon", n.m. : figure géométrique au nombre infini de côtés. Rami Elhanan est israélien, fils d'un rescapé de la Shoah, ancien soldat de la guerre du Kippour ; Bassam Aramin est palestinien, et n'a connu que la dépossession, la prison et les humiliations. Tous deux ont perdu une fille. Abir avait dix ans, Smadar, treize ans.

The novel opens on a battlefield: trudging back from the front through a ravaged and icy wasteland, their horses dying around them, their own hunger rendering them almost savage, the Russian soldiers are exhausted, desperate for food and shelter. They find both, and then music and dance. And there, spinning unafraid among them, dancing for the soldiers and anyone else who'll watch him, is one small pale boy, Rudolf. Rudolf, a prodigy at six years old, who became the greatest dancer of the century, who redefined dance, rewrote his own life and died of AIDS before anyone knew he had it.

In 1919 Emily Ehrlich watches as two young airmen, Alcock and Brown, emerge from the carnage of World War One to pilot the very first nonstop transatlantic flight from Newfoundland to the west of Ireland. In 1845 Frederick Douglass, a black American slave, lands in Ireland to champion ideas of democracy and freedom, only to find a famine unfurling at his feet. And in 1998 Senator George Mitchell criss-crosses the ocean in search of an elusive Irish peace.

It has been eleven years since Diane Foley’s son, the American journalist James Foley, was kidnapped in northern Syria, and nearly ten since that day in August 2014 when she would learn that he had been murdered by ISIS in a public beheading that would ricochet in video around the world. A whole decade. Time rushes past. And yet, for Diane, that moment is unending. In American Mother, legendary author Colum McCann tells Diane’s story as she recalls the months of his captivity, the efforts made to bring him home and the days following his death.

The life of Zoli Novotna begins on the leafy backroads of Slovakia, when she and her grandfather come upon a quiet lake where their family has been drowned by fascist guards. Zoli and her grandfather flee to join up with another clan of travelling harpists. So begins an epic tale of song, intimacy and betrayal. Based loosely on the true story of the Gypsy poet Papusza, and set against the backdrop of the Second World War, Zoli is a love story, a tale of loss and a parable of modern-day Europe.

The Irish writers and good friends discuss their newest novels (each of which is set in New York City and was chosen by Amazon as one of the Top 4 Books of 2009) with each other and the audience. Michael Cerveris performs excerpts from both authors. A book signing follows.

" Une plongée vertigineuse dans les racines de la violence et dans les ravages du fanatisme. Et un vibrant plaidoyer pour que subsiste, même dans l'horreur, une part d'humanité. " Le Parisien week-end. Comment rester debout face à la violence, à l'horreur ? Comment regarder dans les yeux celui qui vous a enlevé ce que vous aviez de plus précieux ? Comment pardonner à l'assassin d'un des siens ? Comment garder espoir quand tant d'atrocités sont commises au nom de la religion ? Toutes ces questions qui nous assaillent dans une actualité toujours plus tragique, Colum McCann y a été confronté lors de sa rencontre avec Diane Foley.

Colum McCann's first novel goes back to the years before the Spanish Civil War, following the adventures of a peripatetic Irish photographer from the war-strewn shores of Europe to the exotic plains of Mexico. The story is told in the words of the photographer's only son, a wanderer himself, who uses his father's unreliable memories and the fading remnants of his art to piece together his family history and explain the mystery surrounding his mother—a Mexican beauty brought back by his father to Ireland.

From the critically acclaimed Colum McCann, author of the National Book Award winner Let the Great World Spin, comes a paean to the power of language, and a direct address to the artistic, professional and philosophical concerns that challenge and sometimes torment an author. Comprising fifty-two short prose pieces, Letters to a Young Writer ranges from practical matters of authorship, such as finding an agent, the pros and cons of creative writing degrees and handling bad reviews

One powerful novella, with two thematically linked short stories on either side of it, forms the basis of Everything in This Country Must. Although these are stories about Ireland and the Troubles, they have an almost mythical rather than a political feel.

2019 geht der Journalist Fennell in Kapstadt an Bord der Georges Lecointe, eines Reparaturschiffs für Kabelbrüche in der Tiefsee. Er soll eine Reportage schreiben, über Kommunikation und ihre Störungen. Im Fokus: die Tiefseekabel, die die globalen Datenflüsse leiten, ständig gefährdet durch Naturereignisse, Krieg und Terrorismus. Der Missionschef Conway scheint nicht glücklich über den Gast, der sich für alles zu interessieren scheint - vielleicht auch für Conways Frau Zanele?

An ageing nun is tracked to ground by her sister; a garrulous beautician must lay out the corpse of a loved one. These are eloquent tales of exile and displacement, of characters always in search of a way back home or of a way to leave it. Mischievous, assured and versatile, Colum McCann's collection of short stories marks him out as one of our best contemporary writers.

The Irish author of TransAtlantic presents his first collection of short fiction in over a decade. With unsurpassed empathy for his characters and their inner lives, Thirteen Ways of Looking explores the territory of chance and the profound and intimate consequences of even our smallest moments. In conversation with Lila Azam Zanganeh ( The Enchanter: Nabokov and Happiness).