Nuri and Afra are the focus of the story, with Nuri being the narrative voice: a voice that switches from past to present, reality to dream states in ways unexpected and wholly heartbreaking. After losing their young son to a bomb in Aleppo as the bombings and strife raged on, Afra, known for her unique paintings and artwork was rendered blind: shock, sadness, even the numbing grief of the loss of their child seemed to weigh her down in ways unimagined. But it was not the first inclination of hardships to come. Her husband Nuri, along with his cousin Mustafa were raising and keeping bees in the hills above the city. Harvesting the honey, Nuri and his cousin have a certain affinity for the little creatures: Nuri’s the more instinctual and emotional tie where his cousin’s was more scientific.

But with the war and hardships, and untold dangers, Nuri and his cousin started to stockpile money, passports and other means of escape from Syria – knowing that things would only get worse. In fact, his cousin’s wife and daughter left the country and resettled in England, just waiting for the rest of the family, including Nuri and Afra to join them. But here – the story dives again into deeply disturbing imagery as the search for Mustafa’s young son ends in tragedy and Mustafa makes the perilous journey out of Syria to join his wife and daughter. Throughout the story, Nuri and Mustafa keep ‘in touch’ through email – telling of the dangers, the journey, even the successes as Mustafa finds himself in Yorkshire and is teaching other immigrants about bees and beekeeping.

It is truly Nuri’s story that we are following – the confrontations with ‘police’ and the associated death threats, rivers and abandoned buildings full of bodies – many with hands bound, the outrageous sums of money to ‘leave’ along with the dangers of unscrupulous ‘agents’. Death from drowning, being lost in the shuffle of ‘refugee camps, endless piles of paperwork and Nuri’s own tentative (at times) grasp on reality. From a park in Athens that becomes a hunting ground for the weak and uncertain, to finally arriving at Heathrow and placed in a boarding house while awaiting asylum paperwork the story is gripping, heartbreaking and a lesson to us all about the lengths and breadths people will go to assure a better life for themselves, even leaving behind all that is familiar and known. Lefteri’s prose and story-telling is solid and based on her own experiences in working with refugees, and her own life being effected by fleeing her homeland with her family. Personally I think her own ‘stories’ as a child growing up in a new place helped to infuse this story with an emotional accessibility that speaks to readers throughout the book – as we hope for the best for Nuri and Afra, and wonder of his gentle caressing of the little bee with no wings….perhaps he’s decided that everyone needs a chance.

I received an eArc copy of the title from the publisher via NetGalley for purpose of honest review. I was not compensated for this review: all conclusions are my own responsibility.

Review first appeared at <a href=” https://wp.me/p3OmRo-avi/” > <a> I am, Indeed </a>

In my constant attempt to learn about the world through books, this novel is an eye-opening one on the tragedy of Syria over these last eight years. As the world watched the protests devolve into civil war, as the world stood by and watched chemical poisoning and the government bombing their own people, as we all became numb to the terrible loss of life, this book reminds us how so many lives were destroyed. Lefteri tells the story of Nuri, who with his cousin Mustafa, operates an incredible honey business in the fields of Aleppo. Moving back and forth in both time and place, we see the beginnings of this terrible conflicts, as the hives are burned by government soldiers, bombs land in back yards, and dead children become commonplace. It is a story of how normal people, through circumstances beyond their control, flee and become refugees. That word, refugee, seems to have become a curse, a wound upon the society where they enter, a bargaining chip, a way to insult the 'other.' Read this book and you will be reminded what a refugee is...someone fleeing great danger at enormous peril, in such desperation to find a place of safety, to find a home.

A powerful and unforgettable novel by author Christy Lefteri. Rich in culture, tradition, love, and heartache. It educates without feeling preachy or political. Beautifully written and timely, there were so many moments that touched me.


*will post to online venues closer to publication and provide link below.

There are books that will stick to us long after we finish reading them and this is one of them for me. It is hauntingly beautiful and the writing is lyrical. It took me to places I have never been (thank goodness) and put me in situations I have never experienced and I am so grateful to that. It is the story of a beekeeper from Syria and his artist wife. They have lost their young son to the bombing and are trying to make their make their way to England to join his cousin in setting up a new beekeeping business there.

Both of them struggle with PTS Syndrome but in very different ways. As they pick their way across very different immigration camps in varying countries, they are met with horrible situations and meet so many despairing people escaping horrific situations. Yet they meet so many people who try to help as best they can and make the best of what they can. What struck me is how most of them are so sad to leave their homelands and how much they miss the beauty of where ever they are from. Everybody wants to go home.

I loved the bee elements in the story. My oldest son raised bees while he was in 4H and I grew very attached to them. The story took me back to those times although they did it on a much more advanced scale than I did. The story of adopting the bee without wings and having that bee thrive was terribly beautiful. We should all be invested in making sure bees thrive and survive. They are so important.

The story brings forth the number of countries struggling to cope with immigration. It's such a difficult situation around the world with people just wanting a home that is safe and secure from violence. It's so sad that many people do not have that and must suffer trying to find it. It's a powerful story.

Thanks to NetGalley for a copy of the book in exchange for a fair review.

Tremendous book! It really gives the reader a sense of the danger and loss of both property and even life, in order to make a new life in a different culture. It certainly helped that the author based her book on her own experience volunteering at a refugee camp. Learning about beekeeping was an added bonus.

Oh, how I loved this book! The way it wove the past and present together was wonderful. The reader follows Nuri, a beekeeper, and his wife Afra, a former artist, as they flee their world in Syria during the civil war. This is a love story, a story of conflict (emotional as well as war), vision or lack of it. I loved the way it was written. I had a hard time putting it down. Readers, please read the afterward as this gives great inside as to how the author came up with this book's premise. I will look for Lefteri's other books.

Thank you Ballentine Books and NetGalley for an advance copy.

A month later, and I'm still thinking about this book. What can I say that hasn't already been said by pretty much everyone in here? The Beekeeper of Aleppo is a heartstopper, a beautiful, glorious, tragically mesmerizing story and one I will carry with me for years and years.

I received this book compliments of NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This is probably the easiest recommendation I could make: GO READ IT. Seriously. You absolutely won't regret it.

The Beekeeper of Aleppo tells the story of a Nuri, a Syrian beekeeper, and his artist wife, Afra, living a simple life in beautiful pre-war Aleppo. However, tragedy strikes in the form of war, loss of life and livelihood, and Nuri and Afra set out in search of asylum in far away England. This book alternates chapters between the arduous journey as refugees and the present day, the "after," so to speak.

I was captivated quickly as the story flowed expertly. The prose was both heartbreaking and hopeful. I could visualize Aleppo as it used to be, and it saddens me to know what has become of it. The refugee experience told in this story is very much a current affair, and will definitely open your mind to the brave souls who risk everything for a better life.

Wow. Just...wow. This book was heartbreaking. It's historical fiction, but 100% based on the real Syrian Refugee crisis going on. The book centers around Nuri, a beekeeper, and his wife Afra, an artist and their struggles to escape war-torn Syria for the UK where Nuri's cousin has already been able to become a refugee. The path they have to take and the hardships they have to endure along their journey is so heartbreaking and it's made even worse to know that these are actual things that people have to go through just to try to make a better life for themselves. The Beekeeper of Aleppo is a haunting book that will stick with you long after you finish reading it.

What an exquisitely crafted account of one couple’s seeking asylum in the wake of the [current] Syrian war! As I was reading this novel, I was thinking that the author must have had personal experience with these refugees as the story felt so very real. In the afterward I saw that, yes, she was one of the English women assigned to a UNICEF refugee station in Greece to assess and attend to their needs and to assist them with applications for requesting asylum in the UK.

The story starts out in Aleppo where Nuri, the husband, is a [professional] beekeeper in partnership with his friend Mustafa. The information about the business of beekeeping and the business of making commercial products from the honey was most interesting. Throughout the book we were given smatterings of information about bees, about different species of bees and about beekeeping. The author presented this information in a way that made the reader hunger for more!

Nuri and his wife, Afra, an artist, are the parents of a young son, Sami, who was killed by a bomb, just at a time when the bombing was thought to have ceased. Afra was blinded by the bombing.

There are many flashbacks throughout the novel which are not well delineated from the current action, but that was, obviously, by design. Confusing to the reader, but that was a useful device to expose Nuri’s state of mind in the traumas ensuing in their journey. Along with that device we had a contrast of Afra’s physical blindness with the mental and emotional blindness caused by Nuri’s confused state.

It was a beautiful, yet heart wrenching story of the plight of millions of innocent people caught up in the tragedies caused by current conflicts and of those who seek to help them as well as others who seek to use and abuse them.

I will definitely seek more books from Christy Lefteri!

I received this ARC from NetGalley and the publisher, Ballantine Books, in exchange for an honest review.

This is a beautifully written story about a man and his wife fleeing Syria in an attempt to get to family in England. As you follow their journey from a war zone to multiple immigrant camps you will find yourself immersed in a world where the lines blur between what is real and what is the mind trying to cope with the horrific things that they have been through. Excellent read!

In an age of increasing awareness of the plight of refugees, Christy Lefteri's new novel focuses on the path of two Syrian refugees, Nuri, a beekeeper, and his wife Afro, an artist. The novel is split into two timelines: each chapter begins with their life in the UK awaiting for a decision on their asylum request and then shifts to their journey from Aleppo to England.

Despite the fact that Lefteri's novel covers just such an important topic, for most of the book I felt bored. Many chapters failed to progress the story, aiming for a reflective tone and landing on dull instead. While I appreciated Nuri and Afra's struggles, I didn't feel any connection to them. In conveying their refusal to process the emotions of their trauma, Lefteri ended up also failing to convey any emotion to me as a reader. Sadly, this is one of the August 2019 book releases I suggest passing on.

Christy Lefteri manages to balance the heartbreaking and the hopeful in this tale of refugees trying to make their way to safety and a new home after escaping war-torn Syria.

Lefteri has crafted a heartbreaking account of seeking asylum and finding more obstacles and violence. If fiction's goal is create empathy in the reader, this book accomplishes it by bounds.

I did not enjoy this book. It was too scattered and jammed with too much information. With encompasses there was a lot of.distraction so.it.did.not.flow.well. The characters were well descrined. Roo !any flashbacks and inconsistent.interruptions in the read I made it easy to be distracted. The only consistency was the references to how need work together.

I received an ARC of The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri. This book is about a married couple, Nuri and Afra, who have lost their young child to the war in Syria and decide to flee to England. This book is told in two timelines, the present where they are living in England, applying for asylum, and the past journey of leaving Syria and all the hardships they faced. This novel examines the difficulties of fleeing a war-torn country and really gives refugees a voice. This story helps people in safe countries understand more about why refugees want to come to a new country--even with all the problems that arise.

This story was heartbreaking; examining PTSD and grief in a really palpable way. I really grew attached to the characters and wanted so badly for everything to work out. I will say the only thing I wish was different was it didn't include much background info about Syria or their civil war. I didn't know much about it and had to Google for some answers on reasons behind the fighting. I gave this book 4 stars.

This book will be published on August 27, 2019 and I encourage you to pick it up.

From its first pages, this book will hit you hard. It depicts Nuri and his wife, Afra, and the disintegration of their life in Syria and their arduous journey to asylum in England. They lost their son to a bomb. Both are suffering from PTSD, although their symptoms are markedly different.
What can I say about a book like this? It is heartrending. It’s beautifully written. It comes across as totally real. But I still struggled with it. It’s very depressing, as you would expect. I had to keep putting the book down and walk away, giving myself time to process it. I loved his memories of the bees the best, those brief glimpses of beauty. It’s incredibly moving, haunting and gut wrenching,
Lefteri knows what she’s writing about. She worked as a volunteer at a refugee center in Athens for two years. As she writes, “The question I sought to answer with this book is what does it mean to see”.
My thanks to netgalley and Random House for an advance copy of this book.

This beautiful story is about a husband and wife having to flee Syria to England, for safety. It talks about their horrific tales before and after. The author did such a beautiful job in writing this book. The writing is so beautiful and flows so easy. It’s not an easy read, but a must read.

The Beekeeper of Aleppo follows the story of Nuri and his wife Afra who are seeking asylum in England as refugees from Syria. Before their home and neighborhood was destroyed by the storm, Nuri was a prominent beekeeper with his cousin, Mustafa. Nuri and Afra are devastated to lose their home and everything they’ve ever known. Going through the immigration process is terrifying for them because don’t know if they will be granted asylum or be sent back to Syria. We see glimpses of their life now and the journey to England through intermittent flashbacks.

This novel is very painful to read at times because of all of the hardship the characters face, but I feel it is an important narrative to read. It amplifies the voices of the unsung and we get to see how each refugee’s journey was different as we meet various people and hear their stories through Nuri’s pov. It paints a vivid portrait of the harsh realities of immigration camps and the lives lost by many on a journey to a safer place:

“We found ourselves enclosed in barbed wire, and before us was a grim village with immaculate concrete walkways, wire-mesh fences, and white gravel. There were rows and rows of square makeshift cabins constructed of corrugated metal, for people to stay in until they got their papers . An empire of identification. “

Lefteri writes with great detail, making you feel all the emotions running through each characters mind. You feel their discomfort, pain and overwhelming sense of loss. You can feel how lost everyone is and how they drift from place to place trying to find solace. Lefteri pays great attention to detail in this story and while reading I could imagine the humming of the bees, the sea near Aleppo, and picture the horrible camps that Nuri and Afro stayed.

The Beekeeper of Aleppo was a very emotional read from start to finish. I liked that the author was inspired to write this book based on her own experiences of working in a refugee camp in Athens, Greece. At times it’s very difficult to read, but it’s also a very lyrical and beautiful story. It discusses topics including immigration, feeling broken, loss/grief, how to move forward in life when you are lost, and family.

I think it’s important to keep telling stories like this to make people more aware of things such as this that are going on in today’s world. These are real people with families and friends who have lost everything and are trying to find a safe place. It’s a heartbreaking piece of fiction but one that is well written.

Trigger Warnings: Mental Illness, Violence, Physical/Sexual Abuse

The Beekeeper of Aleppo could have been just one more of the many books about refugees and their hardships in.escaping their wartorn homes to search for a better life. But, Christy Lefteri deftly leads us along on their journey. What might have been a confusing time switch from past to present and back again, instead flowed seamlessly. I will definitely be recommending this well written and engaging book to my book clubs.

After I finished reading this, I almost wasn’t going to write a full review, but just say that it’s a heartbreaking, realistic rendering of the refugee experience, of people struggling to make it to a country that would provide asylum from a place where they have endured incredible loss and face imminent danger. In spite of the heartache, it’s a beautifully written story and I highly recommend it. That’s all I was going to say because I thought the book was so powerful, it would speak for itself. But I couldn’t leave it at that because this book, this story deserves a few more words. This author deserves a few more words about the amazing thing she has accomplished in this small volume.

Nuri, the Syrian beekeeper of the title and his wife Afra make a harrowing journey from Syria, through Turkey and Greece to the UK, a hard journey, traumatic at times from what Nuri sees and does there and the past he dreams about. Afra, his wife is suffering , blinded by the bombing is grieving an unimaginable loss to most of us. Nuri cares for her, seemingly so strong in the face of the adversity that has fallen on them, but he too is suffering and it manifests itself in such a heartbreaking way. He, too is suffering from the loss, has witnessed horrific things, and has lost his livelihood caring for bees in a business with his cousin. The loss of everything they held dear and now this profound grief and sense of displacement. As I read this, I wondered about Christy Lefteri and how she could be so intimately engaged in their sorrow and their struggle. Then I read her note at the end and realized that her deep compassion emanates from her experiences as a volunteer with refugees, from listening to their stories and from a personal connection to refugees - her parents. (This article describes that connection. https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-beekeeper-of-aleppo-fictionalising-the-refugee-crisis-from-personal-experience-1.3900869)

I loved the writing, how she seamlessly bridges the past to the present through flashbacks and through Nuri’s dreams and nightmares and by connecting one chapter to another by a word. The last word of each chapter is continued with the title of the next chapter and that word begins the first sentence of that chapter. I found this very affecting. This is not a very long book, but it is not a quick one to read. It is incredibly sad and some of the images were reminiscent of the horrific ones I’ve seen on TV, as the refugee crisis is front and center in the news. I have read a number of novels about immigrants, but none until now about the journey to asylum. This is a stunning portrayal, profoundly emotional and thought provoking. If I had written a shorter review, I would have said, you need to read this.

I received an advanced copy of this book from Random House/Ballantine through NetGalley.