The Beekeeper of Aleppo
SynopsisPlot
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.
Story
About this book
Nuri is a beekeeper living in the hills around Aleppo, Syria. His wife Afra is a painter who sells landscape works at the local open-air market. Their days follow a quiet rhythm of prayer, family, and the tending of hives in the countryside. When civil war reaches Aleppo and destroys the life they have built, Nuri decides they must leave. The journey ahead will take them through Turkey and Greece, aiming for an uncertain arrival in Britain.
Afra has lost her sight, a detail that reshapes every stage of their displacement. Nuri must guide her physically while also contending with her grief and his own. Christy Lefteri structures the novel around this shared crossing, using it to explore how people carry forward what they have lost and how they hold onto each other when familiar surroundings disappear. The route the couple follows mirrors paths taken by real refugees during the Syrian conflict, and Lefteri herself volunteered with refugees in Athens before writing the book.
The story moves between memories of life in Aleppo and the present dangers of the road. Sensory details from beekeeping and painting recur throughout, linking what was left behind to the couple's effort to imagine a future.
