Bradford

City in West Yorkshire, England. In Apeirogon Bassam studies Peace Studies here and finds a way back home.

At a glance

Source	Author	Role	In one line
Apeirogon	Colum McCann	journey waypoint	Bassam’s master’s year: Holocaust studies, night walks, and readiness to return to Anata.

Apeirogon — Colum McCann (2020)

Source: Apeirogon · Original · Readwise highlight

Later he would meet Englishmen who rolled their eyes when he mentioned Bradford and he could almost see their disdain, nothing like Oxford, nothing like Cambridge, nothing like Edinburgh, nothing like Manchester, but he and Salwa loved it, the openness of the town, the space, the green park, the clean path along the river, the rows of low redbrick houses, the chimneys

• Role: journey waypoint
• In the book: Bassam and Salwa move to Bradford for his Peace Studies master’s degree, studying the Holocaust and Theresienstadt in the library. The family settles in a house on Pemberton Drive; he walks the streets at night with a notebook, finds a calmer happiness, and realizes he is ready to return to Anata. It is where his thesis and his language of grief as a weapon take shape.
• Why it matters: A place of study and distance that changes Bassam’s thinking before his return.