1970s, New York, a time of rapid change, everything moves, flies, rushes. But for a moment the confusion and chaos of the metropolis freezes: a man walks on a tightrope between the towers of the World Trade Center. This incredible trick of the French tightrope walker becomes the point at which the stories of the heroes are concentrated: a street priest and prostitutes; mothers who lost sons in Vietnam, and judges. McCann uses the past to understand the present. Stories from the era when the world in which we now live were formed allow us to comprehend today’s days, which are no less turbulent than the already distant 1970s. Colum McCann's novel won the 2010 Dublin Prize for Literature, one of the world's most prestigious literary prizes.

My novel describes a model of a hidden world revolving around a single day, August 9, 1974. Summer is in full swing, and Philippe Petit, a French tightrope walker, takes a breathtaking walk between the towers of the World Trade Center, 110 floors high. This book is about an era that in many ways is an accurate reflection of our time.