Colum McCann

"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 …

Taking his inspiration from biographical facts, novelist Colum McCann tells the erotically charged story of the Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev through the cast 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 …

This Side of Brightness by Colum McCannAt the turn of the century, Nathan Walker comes to New York City to take the most dangerous job in the country. A sandhog, he burrows beneath the East River, digging the tunnel that will carry trains from Brooklyn to Manhattan. In the bowels of the riverbed, the sandhogs--black, …

Zoli is a novel by Colum McCann. It follows the life of Marienka Novotna, nicknamed "Zoli", a Slovak Romani woman, from her childhood in the 1930s, through her exile in the 1950s, to her late adult life. Although Zoli is a fictional character, her life is loosely based on that of the Polish Romani poet Papusza. Zoli …