The Beekeeper of Aleppo
Christy Lefteri, 2019
Random House
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781984821218
Summary
This unforgettable novel puts human faces on the Syrian war with the immigrant story of a beekeeper, his wife, and the triumph of spirit when the world becomes unrecognizable.
Nuri is a beekeeper and Afra, his wife, is an artist. Mornings, Nuri rises early to hear the call to prayer before driving to his hives in the countryside.
On weekends, Afra sells her colorful landscape paintings at the open-air market. They live a simple life, rich in family and friends, in the hills of the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo—until the unthinkable happens.
When all they love is destroyed by war, Nuri knows they have no choice except to leave their home. But escaping Syria will be no easy task: Afra has lost her sight, leaving Nuri to navigate her grief as well as a perilous journey through Turkey and Greece toward an uncertain future in Britain.
Nuri is sustained only by the knowledge that waiting for them is his cousin Mustafa, who has started an apiary in Yorkshire and is teaching fellow refugees beekeeping. As Nuri and Afra travel through a broken world, they must confront not only the pain of their own unspeakable loss but dangers that would overwhelm even the bravest souls. Above all, they must make the difficult journey back to each other, a path once so familiar yet rendered foreign by the heartache of displacement.
Moving, intimate, and beautifully written, The Beekeeper of Aleppo is a book for our times: a novel that at once reminds us that the most peaceful and ordinary lives can be utterly upended in unimaginable ways and brings a journey in faraway lands close to home, never to be forgotten. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1980
• Raised—London, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Brunel University
• Currently—lives in London
Brought up in London, Christy Lefteri is the child of Cypriot refugees. She is a lecturer in creative writing at Brunel University. The Beekeeper of Aleppo was born out of her time working as a volunteer at a UNICEF-supported refugee center in Athens. She is the author of the novel The Beekeeper of Aleppo (2019). (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
In recounting the daily brutality as well as the glimmers of beauty, this novel humanizes the terrifying refugee stories we read about in the news. Lefteri explores questions of trust and portrays what trauma and loss can do to individuals and their relationships.… A beautiful rumination on seeing what is right in front of us—both the negative and the positive.
Boston Globe
Beekeeper Nuri and his wife, Afra, are devastated by the Syrian civil war. After violence claims their child and Afra’s eyesight, the couple is forced to flee Aleppo and make the fraught journey to Britain—and an uncertain future ("5 Books Not to Miss").
USA Today
[Christy] Lefteri sensitively charts what it’s like when war comes home, alert to the subtle effects of trauma and grief. Nuri and Afra are not broadly sketched as victims, but rather suffer in different and complex ways from PTSD.… By creating characters with such rich, complex inner lives, Lefteri shows that in order to stretch compassion to millions of people, it helps to begin with one.
Time
[H]aunting and resonant story of Syrian war refugees undertaking a treacherous journey…. Lefteri perceptively and powerfully documents the horrors of the Syrian civil war…. Readers will find this deeply affecting for both its psychological intensity and emotional acuity.
Publishers Weekly
In fluid, forthright language, Lefteri brings us closer to the refugee experience as beekeeper Nuri and his wife… escape Aleppo and travel dangerously to Great Britain.… There’s no overloading the deck with drama; this story tells itself, absorbingly and heartrendingly.
Library Journal
Nuri’s fluid narration merges past and present into a patchwork of memory, pain, loss, and hope…. With determination laden in sorrow, Nuri and Afra strive to find their way to a new life and back to each other.
Booklist
(Starred review) [T]ouching and terrifying.… Nuri's story rings with authenticity, from the vast, impersonal cruelties of war to the tiny kindnesses that help people survive it..… A well-crafted structure and a troubled but engaging narrator power this moving story of Syrian refugees.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for THE BEEKEEPER OF ALEPPO … then take off on your own:
1. What kind of life did Nuri and Afra have as a family in Aleppo. Can you imagine having your life destroyed in front of your eyes and being forced to leave it all behind as Nuri and Afra did?
2. Talk about the hardships of the couple's journey across Europe, on their way to Great Britain. Discuss the hatred and prejudice they endured, as well as physical dangers. What horrified you most in that journey?
3. The trauma of their journey has left both Nuri and Afra deeply scarred. Talk about the way it has opened a seemingly unbridgeable gulf between the couple. Nuri is our narrator and thinks of Afra as "locked in." What in Afra's behavior leads to Nuri's assessment?
4. (Follow-up to Question XX) How is Nuri affected? He believes he no longer worthy of her or her forgiveness. Why does believe that?
5. Can you imagine what life would be like for this couple and the millions of others, who are waiting in limbo, neither able to move forward with their lives nor return the life behind them. Talk about what the limbo and dislocation would feel like. How well do you think Christy Lefteri has captured those feelings and experiences? Has reading the Beekeeper of Aleppo, led you to a different understanding, a deeper empathy perhaps, regarding refugees? Or is the problem so vast, so painful, that it remains almost impossible, as a single individual, to grasp?
6. Does this book offer hope?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)