Most Popular Books by Colum McCann

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • Colum McCann’s beloved novel inspired by Philippe Petit’s daring high-wire stunt, which is also depicted in the film The Walk starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in bestselling novelist Colum McCann’s stunningly intricate portrait of a city and its people. Let the Great World Spin is the critically acclaimed author’s most ambitious novel yet: a dazzlingly rich vision of the pain, loveliness, mystery, and promise of New York City in the 1970s. Corrigan, a radical young Irish monk, struggles with his own demons as he lives among the prostitutes in the middle of the burning Bronx. A group of mothers gather in a Park Avenue apartment to mourn their sons who died in Vietnam, only to discover just how much divides them even in grief. A young artist finds herself at the scene of a hit-and-run that sends her own life careening sideways. Tillie, a thirty-eight-year-old grandmother, turns tricks alongside her teenage daughter, determined not only to take care of her family but to prove her own worth. Elegantly weaving together these and other seemingly disparate lives, McCann’s powerful allegory comes alive in the unforgettable voices of the city’s people, unexpectedly drawn together by hope, beauty, and the “artistic crime of the century.” A sweeping and radical social novel, Let the Great World Spin captures the spirit of America in a time of transition, extraordinary promise, and, in hindsight, heartbreaking innocence. Hailed as a “fiercely original talent” (San Francisco Chronicle), award-winning novelist McCann has delivered a triumphantly American masterpiece that awakens in us a sense of what the novel can achieve, confront, and even heal. Praise for Let the Great World Spin “This is a gorgeous book, multilayered and deeply felt, and it’s a damned lot of fun to read, too. Leave it to an Irishman to write one of the greatest-ever novels about New York. There’s so much passion and humor and pure lifeforce on every page of Let the Great World Spin that you’ll find yourself giddy, dizzy, overwhelmed.”—Dave Eggers “Stunning . . . [an] elegiac glimpse of hope . . . It’s a novel rooted firmly in time and place. It vividly captures New York at its worst and best. But it transcends all that. In the end, it’s a novel about families—the ones we’re born into and the ones we make for ourselves.”—USA Today “The first great 9/11 novel . . . We are all dancing on the wire of history, and even on solid ground we breathe the thinnest of air.”—Esquire “Mesmerizing . . . a Joycean look at the lives of New Yorkers changed by a single act on a single day . . . Colum McCann’s marvelously rich novel . . . weaves a portrait of a city and a moment, dizzyingly satisfying to read and difficult to put down.”—The Seattle Times “Vibrantly whole . . . With a series of spare, gorgeously wrought vignettes, Colum McCann brings 1970s New York to life. . . . And as always, McCann’s heart-stoppingly simple descriptions wow.”—Entertainment Weekly “An act of pure bravado, dizzying proof that to keep your balance you need to know how to fall.”—O: The Oprah Magazine

From the author of Songdogs, a magnificent work of imagination and history set in the tunnels of New York City. In the early years of the century, Nathan Walker leaves his native Georgia for New York City and the most dangerous job in America. A sandhog, he burrows beneath the East River, digging the tunnel that will carry trains from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Above ground, the sandhogs--black, white, Irish, Italian--keep their distance from each other until a spectacular accident welds a bond between Walker and his fellow diggers--a bond that will bless and curse the next three generations. Years later, Treefrog, a homeless man driven below by a shameful secret, endures a punishing winter in his subway nest. In tones ranging from bleak to disturbingly funny, Treefrog recounts his strategies of survival--killing rats, scavenging for discarded soda cans, washing in the snow. Between Nathan Walker and Treefrog stretch seventy years of ill-fated loves and unintended crimes. In a triumph of plotting, the two stories fuse to form a tale of family, race, and redemption that is as bold and fabulous as New York City itself. In This Side of Brightness, Colum McCann confirms his place in the front ranks of modern writers.

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • An “urgent [and] ingenious” (The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice) novel of rupture and repair in the digital age, delving into a hidden world deep under the ocean—from the acclaimed author of Apeirogon and Let the Great World Spin “The spirit of Joseph Conrad hovers over the text, but here the heart of darkness lies at the bottom of the ocean.”—Salman Rushdie A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, BookPage “Everything gets fixed, and we all stay broken.” Anthony Fennell, an Irish journalist and playwright, is assigned to cover the underwater cables that carry the world’s information. The sum of human existence—words, images, transactions, memes, voices, viruses—travels through the tiny fiber-optic tubes. But sometimes the tubes break, at an unfathomable depth. Fennell’s journey brings him to the west coast of Africa, where he uncovers a story about the raw human labor behind the dazzling veneer of the technological world. He meets a fellow Irishman, John Conway, the chief of mission on a cable repair ship. The mysterious Conway is a skilled engineer and a freediver capable of reaching extraordinary depths. He is also in love with a South African actress, Zanele, who must leave to go on her own literary adventure to London. When the ship is sent up the coast to repair a series of major underwater breaks, both men learn that the very cables they seek to fix carry the news that may cause their lives to unravel. At sea, they are forced to confront the most elemental questions of life, love, absence, belonging, and the perils of our severed connections. Can we, in our fractured world, reweave ourselves out of the thin, broken threads of our pasts? Can the ruptured things awaken us from our despair? Resoundingly simple and turbulent at the same time, Twist is a meditation on the nature of narrative and truth from one of the great storytellers of our times.

Rami Elhanan și Bassam Aramin trăiesc aproape unul de celălalt – și totuși sunt complet diferiți. Rami e israelian. Bassam e palestinian. Plăcuța de înmatriculare a lui Rami e galbenă. Plăcuța de înmatriculare a lui Bassam e verde. Rami face cincisprezece minute cu mașina până în Cisiordania. Același drum îi ia lui Bassam o oră și jumătate. Ambii bărbați și-au pierdut fiicele. Fata de treisprezece ani a lui Rami, Smadar, a fost ucisă într-un atentat sinucigaș în timp ce se ducea să-și cumpere cărți împreună cu prietenele ei. Fiica lui Bassam, Abir, în vârstă de zece ani, a fost ucisă cu un glonț de cauciuc de un membru al poliției de frontieră în fața școlii. În buzunar avea o brățară de dropsuri pe care nu apucase să le mănânce. Rami și Bassam au fost crescuți să se urască unul pe celălalt. Și totuși devin cei mai buni prieteni. În acest roman epic – numit după un poligon cu un număr de laturi infinit numărabil –, Colum McCann străbate secole și continente, realizând o țesătură în care timpul, arta, istoria, natura și politica alcătuiesc o tapiserie de prietenie, dragoste, pierdere și apartenență. Muzical, plin de forță, delicat și ambițios, Apeirogon este romanul vremurilor noastre. „Apeirogon nu seamănă cu nici o carte pe care ați citit-o vreodată... Veți descoperi o formă narativă fără precedent și profund autentică. Vă pot spune doar atât: citiți cartea lui McCann. Este o carte importantă.” Michael Cunningham „McCann face o echilibristică perfectă între viață și artă; scriind cu un lirism și o empatie extraordinare, surprinde modul în care se propagă atât efectele provocate de violență și durere, cât și frumusețea și puterea miraculoasă a prieteniei și a iubirii, a curajului și a adevărului.” Booklist „Un apeirogon este un poligon cu un număr infinit de laturi – iar cartea transcendentă a lui Colum McCann este plină de sute de segmente emoționale care îndeamnă la reflecție. McCann transformă aceste realități crude în ficțiune captivantă, și o face cu o imensă forță poetică.” Independent „Orbitor... hipnotic... sfâșietor și fascinant... Pe lângă strălucirea caleidoscopică a narațiunii, aceasta este și o poveste profund umană.” San Francisco Chronicle

"In his first collection of short fiction in more than a decade, McCann charts the territory of chance, and the profound and intimate consequences of even our smallest moments"--

From the bestselling author of the National Book Award winner Let the Great World Spin comes a lesson in how to be a writer—and so much more than that. Intriguing and inspirational, this book is a call to look outward rather than inward. McCann asks his readers to constantly push the boundaries of experience, to see empathy and wonder in the stories we craft and hear. A paean to the power of language, both by argument and by example, Letters to a Young Writer is fierce and honest in its testament to the bruises delivered by writing as both a profession and a calling. It charges aspiring writers to learn the rules and even break them. These fifty-two essays are ultimately a profound challenge to a new generation to bring truth and light to a dark world through their art.

The National Book Award–winning author''s biographical novel of Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev: "Exuberant and exhilarating . . . a brilliant leap of imagination" ( San Francisco Chronicle). In Dancer, Colum McCann tells the ballet icon''s story through the myriad voices of those who knew him. There is Anna Vasileva, Rudi''s first ballet teacher, who rescues her protégé from the stunted life of his provincial town; Yulia, whose sexual and artistic ambitions are thwarted by her Soviet-sanctioned marriage; and Victor, the Venezuelan street hustler, who reveals the lurid underside of the gay celebrity set. Spanning four decades and many worlds, from the horrors of the Second World War to the wild abandon of New York in the ''80s, Dancer is peopled by a large cast of characters, obscure and famous: doormen and shoemakers, nurses and translators, Margot Fonteyn, Eric Bruhn, and John Lennon. And at the heart of the spectacle stands the artist himself, willful, lustful, and driven by a never-to-be-met need for perfection.

A unique love story, a tale of loss, a parable of Europe, this haunting novel is an examination of intimacy and betrayal in a community rarely captured so vibrantly in contemporary literature. Zoli Novotna, a young woman raised in the traveling Gypsy tradition, is a poet by accident as much as desire. As 1930s fascism spreads over Czechoslovakia, Zoli and her grandfather flee to join a clan of fellow Romani harpists. Sharpened by the world of books, which is often frowned upon in the Romani tradition, Zoli becomes the poster girl for a brave new world. As she shapes the ancient songs to her times, she finds her gift embraced by the Gypsy people and savored by a young English expatriate, Stephen Swann. But Zoli soon finds that when she falls she cannot fall halfway–neither in love nor in politics. While Zoli’s fame and poetic skills deepen, the ruling Communists begin to use her for their own favor. Cast out from her family, Zoli abandons her past to journey to the West, in a novel that spans the 20th century and travels the breadth of Europe. Colum McCann, acclaimed author of Dancer and This Side of Brightness, has created a sensuous novel about exile, belonging and survival, based loosely on the true story of the Romani poet Papsuza. It spans the twentieth century and travels the breadth of Europe. In the tradition of Steinbeck, Coetzee, and Ondaatje, McCann finds the art inherent in social and political history, while vividly depicting how far one gifted woman must journey to find where she belongs. Praise for Zoli “Soaring and stumbling over decades of midcentury Eastern Europe, Zoli is a riveting novel.”—Gail Caldwell, Boston Sunday Globe “Beautifully written . . . Beautifully conceived, wonderfully told, the story is proof of an indomitable spirit. The elusive character of Zoli, the brilliang artist, is unforgettable.”—The Washington Post Book World BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Colum McCann''s TransAtlantic.

The National Book Award–winning author reveals the echoes of political tragedy in the most intimate lives of people during Northern Ireland''s Troubles. Writing in a new form, but with the skill and force and sparkling poetry that have brought him international acclaim, Colum McCann has delivered masterful, memorable short fiction. In Everything in This Country Must, a teenage girl must choose between allegiance to her Catholic father and gratitude to the British soldiers who have saved the family''s horse. The young hero of Hunger Strike, a novella, tries to replicate the experience of his uncle, an IRA prisoner on hunger strike. And in Wood, a small boy does his part for the Protestant marches, concealing his involvement from his blind father. "Excellent―this is a powerful and moving collection." ―Roddy Doyle, Booker Prize–winning author "Captures that peculiar nexus of hormones, deprivation and political imperative on a Northern Irish child coming of age." ― Los Angeles Times Book Review "[A] stunning new book . . . Told in McCann''s lush prose, these stories are both mesmerizing and painful." — Minneapolis Star-Tribune "On every page, McCann''s prose flows with a lean, austere majesty . . . The result is a shivery, hard-earned, unforgettable beauty." —Dan Cryer, Newsday "McCann''s fiction is equal parts death and beauty, its inescapable realism uplifted by an exquisitely soulful and visual prose." —Gail Caldwell, The Boston Globe "McCann''s stunning achievement is that he never strikes a dissonant note despite the dissonance in his characters'' lives." —Denise Gess, The Washington Post Book World

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS In the National Book Award–winning Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann thrilled readers with a marvelous high-wire act of fiction that The New York Times Book Review called “an emotional tour de force.” Now McCann demonstrates once again why he is one of the most acclaimed and essential authors of his generation with a soaring novel that spans continents, leaps centuries, and unites a cast of deftly rendered characters, both real and imagined. Newfoundland, 1919. Two aviators—Jack Alcock and Arthur Brown—set course for Ireland as they attempt the first nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean, placing their trust in a modified bomber to heal the wounds of the Great War. Dublin, 1845 and ’46. On an international lecture tour in support of his subversive autobiography, Frederick Douglass finds the Irish people sympathetic to the abolitionist cause—despite the fact that, as famine ravages the countryside, the poor suffer from hardships that are astonishing even to an American slave. New York, 1998. Leaving behind a young wife and newborn child, Senator George Mitchell departs for Belfast, where it has fallen to him, the son of an Irish-American father and a Lebanese mother, to shepherd Northern Ireland’s notoriously bitter and volatile peace talks to an uncertain conclusion. These three iconic crossings are connected by a series of remarkable women whose personal stories are caught up in the swells of history. Beginning with Irish housemaid Lily Duggan, who crosses paths with Frederick Douglass, the novel follows her daughter and granddaughter, Emily and Lottie, and culminates in the present-day story of Hannah Carson, in whom all the hopes and failures of previous generations live on. From the loughs of Ireland to the flatlands of Missouri and the windswept coast of Newfoundland, their journeys mirror the progress and shape of history. They each learn that even the most unassuming moments of grace have a way of rippling through time, space, and memory. The most mature work yet from an incomparable storyteller, TransAtlantic is a profound meditation on identity and history in a wide world that grows somehow smaller and more wondrous with each passing year. Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more. “A dazzlingly talented author’s latest high-wire act . . . Reminiscent of the finest work of Michael Ondaatje and Michael Cunningham, TransAtlantic is Colum McCann’s most penetrating novel yet.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “One of the greatest pleasures of TransAtlantic is how provisional it makes history feel, how intimate, and intensely real. . . . Here is the uncanny thing McCann finds again and again about the miraculous: that it is inseparable from the everyday.”—The Boston Globe “Ingenious . . . The intricate connections [McCann] has crafted between the stories of his women and our men [seem] written in air, in water, and—given that his subject is the confluence of Irish and American history—in blood.”—Esquire “Another sweeping, beautifully constructed tapestry of life . . . Reading McCann is a rare joy.”—The Seattle Times “Entrancing . . . McCann folds his epic meticulously into this relatively slim volume like an accordion; each pleat holds music—elation and sorrow.”—The Denver Post

A mesmerizing evocation of the gulf between memory and imagination, love and loss, past and present from the National Book Award–winning author. With unreliable memories and scraps of photographs as his only clues, Conor Lyons follows in the tracks of his father, a rootless photographer, as he moved from war-torn Spain, to the barren plains of Mexico, where he met and married Conor''s mother, to the American West, and finally back to Ireland, where the marriage and the story reach their heartrending climax. The narratives of Conor''s quest and his parents'' lives twine and untwine to astonishing effect. "A lyrical jewel . . . A graceful novel about the unbreachable gap between memory and reality, Songdogs promises a fine literary future for Colum McCann." —Joy Press, The Baltimore Sun "McCann has unusual control over his material . . . His take on the New World is fresh and often amusing, but what we remember most is the poignancy." —Michael Harris, Los Angeles Times Book Review "Powerful . . . wistful and gracefully shadowed . . . The author has a keen eye and ear; his language is full of sparkling poetry and images." —Scott Veale, The New York Times Book Review "Positively vibrates . . . consistently engaging . . . remarkably beautiful." —Peggy O''Brien, The Boston Sunday Globe

"One of the best books I''ve read in many, many years, if not in my life."—Anderson Cooper Featured on MSNBC''s Morning Joe What does a mother say to the person responsible for kidnapping, torturing, and murdering her son? National Book Award-winning author Colum McCann channels Diane Foley’s voice as she tells her story, as the mother of American journalist Jim Foley – in search of answers, beyond justice, found through dogged, empathetic, spiritual enquiry. In late 2021, Diane Foley sat at a table across from her son''s killer, Alexanda Kotey, a member of the ISIS group known as "The Beatles" who plead guilty to the kidnapping, torture, and murder of her son seven years before. Kotey was about to go serve life imprisonment and this was Diane’s chance to talk to the man who had been involved with brutally taking her son''s last breath. What would she say to his killer? What would he reveal to her? Might she even be able to summon forgiveness for him? So begins American Mother— which reads alternately like a thriller, a biography, a mystery, a memoir, and a literary examination of grace. Diane looks back on the early days when Jim was a child and his journey to journalism, and the killing fields of the world where he reports with indefatigable determination and insight on the plight of those caught up in the agonies of war. She guides us through her family history and the difficulties they faced when Jim was captured. And she also charts the tenacity it takes to turn her grief into grace as she seeks to give voice to those who are still being kidnapped and wrongfully detained around the world. Few journeys are more worthy than this and, in this astonishing book, we are all invited to celebrate the lives of those who are never, in the end, gone.

From the New York Timesbestselling, National Book Award-winning, Booker Prize-longlisted author of Let the Great World Spin and Transatlantic comes a passionate and practical book of advice, as essential for budding writers as Stephen King''s On Writing

Twelve stories about Irish misfits by the author of Songdogs include the tale of the anorexic nun who dies in a Long Island hospital and the talkative beautician who works with corpses.