Such an important story for people to know. There are lots of immigrant stories but this one is especially worth reading for it's insights into another culture.

I would and have recommended this book to everyone I know. An account of a Syrian refugee's loss of home and resettling in a new country. Beautifully written in a way that kept me awake at night. At such an apt time in our society, where we need to personalize immigration in order to not lose our humanity it is a must read for anyone with a heart, with a conscious and most importantly, with a vote.

This book was absolutely heartbreaking and loving. Nuri is a Syrian refugee living in the UK, retelling his story as a beekeeper, losing family, and trying to flee his country. A parallel in the book outlines his true love for his wife and how we can lose people while trying to protect him. This book made me smile and cry and I would recommend it to anyone who needs to be humbled a bit.

This book made my heart stop beating a time or two. The author did a powerful job giving these characters humanity. Her years spent working with refugees and her careful study of people is clearly reflected throughout these pages. This gut wrenching story gave me a view into a world I would never want to see. It cultivated a mercy that will never leave me. My eyes are open to the tragedy that is swept away from public view. The story is so well told that I felt like I knew the people in it. I wanted the beekeeper to find his way and his wife to be healed. I grieved with them. I cried. I was in shock. This is a powerful story.

The Beekeeper of Aleppo gives names and faces to the glimpses we've had of the people that became Syrian refugees. People who were living their lives, working their jobs, raising their families, and enjoying everyday home life until the war and fighting finally blew up their existence and killed their friends, neighbors, and family. All that is left to do is to wait to be killed or die a slow death of starvation and lack of everything a human needs to survive.

We meet Nuri, a beekeeper who has lost his hives and bees, and his blind wife, Afra. They have suffered the worst loss of all and still must find a way to keep living, if they can find the will to keep living, in their war ravaged world. Nuri's beekeeping partner and cousin Mustafa urges Nuri to find a way to get to Yorkshire, where Mustafa started an apiary and is training other refugees to raise bees. Nuri must convince his wife Afra, whose heart and spirit are broken by all that they have lost, to make the journey with him.

What they've already seen and suffered is more than they can shoulder but now they must endure even more as they make the long, dangerous, journey through strange lands and bureaucratic paperwork that has the power to throw their lives right back into the hell of their homeland. We meet others that are trying to find a home away from persecution, war, and the surety of death, if they are made to return to the places that they are fleeing. Privacy, personal space, all that they knew as home and family, are gone and it's hard to imagine how anyone can have the hope and willpower to keep fighting when they are so beaten into the ground.

Christy Lefteri knows what she is writing about because she worked with refugees and saw their suffering and anguish and did what she could do to help them. Her love of these hurting people is so very clear in the way she writes about them and I thank her helping me to really see what these refugees go through to find a place where they can be eat, sleep, and be safe again. Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine and NetGalley for this ARC.

In spite of the heart-wrenching journey that you follow along with while reading, this book is so beautifully and realistically written. Definitely a read that will stay with you for a while.

Both main characters, Nuri and Afra, experience immense loss, constant struggle, and flickers of hope and love. These main characters, as well as the supporting characters, were all wonderfully done. Each character complimented the next and kept the story moving at a good pace to keep the reader interested. The actions, and reactions, were very believable as well.

The story itself is told in both the past and the present to show the reader what Nuri and Afra went through to get where they are today, still seeking asylum. I found it easy to paint a vivid image in my mind of the settings. Plus, the author included really intriguing tidbits about beekeeping and the bees themselves which I loved.

Where there are bees there are flowers, and where there are flowers there is new life and hope.

I absolutely recommend that everyone reads The Beekeeper of Aleppo because it is so relevant today. Being able to get just a small glimpse of what refugees must go through simply to feel safe is heartbreaking.

What an amazing story! Sadness. Resilience. Over and over again there are casualties of civilians during war. Lefteri tells a masterful tale of a bookkeeper named Nuri and his artist wife, Afra. They live in the hills outside of Aleppo. Everything is lost during the civil war in Syria including Afra’s eyesight. As refugees, Lefteri makes you feel like you are right beside this refugee couple as they make the journey through Turkey and Greece to try to get to Great Britain where Nuri has a cousin as a beekeeper. I know I will be haunted by this story for a long time. It would be an excellent bookclub choice. Thank you NetGalley and Ballantine Books for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed The Beekeeper of Aleppo and found its portrayal of refugee life to be heart-wrenching and grieving. That being said, I had caught on to the plot twist rather early, so it felt to me like the ending was rather sudden. I'll definitely be reading more from this author.

After two summers spent working at a refugee center in Greece listening to the stories of Syrian refugees, the author knew she wanted to write a story that would shine a light on their plight. While the story involving an extended family of beekeepers from Syria is fictional, it is a melding of the typical stories of refugees and what they endure during their escape from Syria. It is heartbreaking and beautifully written and is a story that will be hard to forget.

My heart is breaking over this book. 💔 I, like so many have seen news reports of war torn countries, and in your head you know it is awful, uncomprehendable, horrifying and just unbelievably sad. But, this author created a book that made me feel like I was right there, walking along with Afra and Nuri. I could feel the nauseating waves in the boat, the heat of the desert, and the smell of the refugee camps. By the end of this book I was emotionally spent.... And then I read the Author note. She was there to help the refugees when they fled Syria. And I believe that is why she was able to create such an amazing book. Thank you Christy Lefteri for helping this lady from Georgia feel empathy, sympathy, and just feel a small sense of what it was like to be Afra and Nuri.

I received this ebook from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

What would you do if the unthinkable happened to you? Fortunately many of this never have to cope with this experience. Nuri and Afra give up everything and are forced to leave their beautiful city of Aleppo due to war conflicts. The difficult journey has hope that sustains them for the chance of a new life.

I didn’t connect to the writing. The story was solid, but the writing kept pulling me out of the story. Heavy on telling, not enough showing. The time jumps were also confusing,

I received a free copy from NetGalley. This book showed up on several lists I saw as being popular, so I was looking forward to reading it. I was disappointed. I struggled to finish it and put it down several times. I wanted the character to grow, and even at the end he just felt so stuck to me. Honestly, that was probably the point the author was trying to make. That being said, books of this topic are important during the current humanitarian crisis we face and it was well worth the struggle to finish it, so as to know more about what is going on in the wider world.

In 2016 and 2017, author Christy Lefteri volunteered for UNICEF at a refugee center in Athens, Greece. There, she treated droves of Syrians fleeing the brutal takeover of Aleppo. So many people had suffered through the bombing and shooting by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, nearby countries like Macedonia eventually had to close their borders to asylum seekers. Further European destinations were a pipe dream to families without resources. With The Beekeeper of Aleppo, Lefteri compiles the collective horrors of war into a compelling narrative buoyed by hope, but also laced with brutal realism.

The novel tells the story of Nuri, a former beekeeper from Syria who has arrived in the United Kingdom with his wife, Afra. Back in Aleppo, Afra had been an artist, but the war took her eyesight and the couple’s child, Sami. The couple is overwhelmed with grief from the loss of their son and their home. Lefteri alternates between the relative calm of the UK—where Nuri and Afra are anxiously waiting for their asylum status to be approved—and flashbacks to their journey with lecherous smugglers, treacherous seas, and uncertain flights.

Throughout her storytelling, Lefteri uses the imagery of bees and gardens to help the reader process Nuri’s emotions. When Nuri finds scant internet access to check emails from his cousin Mustafa, Mustafa talks endlessly of the new bee colony they will establish together in Britain. While Nuri is battling bureaucracy to receive healthcare for his blind wife, he dutifully attends to a single bee outside that doesn’t have any wings. Even during the throes of escape, Mustafa tells Nuri, “Spend your money wisely—the smugglers will try to get as much out of you as they can, but keep in mind that there is a longer journey ahead. You must learn to haggle. People are not like bees. We do not work together, we have no real sense of a greater good—I’ve come to realize this now.” These passages are lyrically written and provide a much-needed palate cleanser after scenes of violence and hopelessness.

Nuri’s goal throughout the book is to reach Mustafa, but once he arrives, he’s afraid to contact the best friend he’s been separated from for so long. The emotional and physical journey for him and Afra is nearly insurmountable, they are entirely different people in the UK than they were in Syria. Nuri says, “I do not want Mustafa to know what has become of me. We are finally in the same country, but if we meet he will see a broken man. I do not believe he will recognize me.” Lefteri captures the inner life of a broken man who can’t fully process his own trauma with heartbreaking accuracy.

But even after arriving in the UK, Nuri and Afra’s journey is far from over. Nuri knows the immigration officer "will want to know how we got here and she will be looking for a reason to send us away. But I know that if I say the right things, if I convince her that I'm not a killer, then we will get to stay here because we are the lucky ones, because we have come from the worst place in the world." They have to be coached on how to describe their suffering convincingly. Even then, the immigration officer tells them, “To stay in the UK as a refugee you must be unable to live safely in any part of your own country because you fear persecution there.” Nuri responds, “Any part? Will you send us back to a different part?” He’s met with silence.

The plight of refugees is a hard pill to swallow, but a necessary one. When you’re thrust into a first-person account (even a fictional one), you’re forced to reckon with how war affects identity. At one crowded checkpoint, Nuri detachedly observes the other refugees in the market stalls. “Sometimes I forgot that I was one of these people,” he thinks. No one ever thinks it will happen to them. In Aleppo, Nuri and Afra had a family, their careers, and charming nights with friends eating rich food with fresh jasmine and honeycomb. Even after the worst happens—the loss of a child—how could they move on? One can only hope they are met with compassion along the way, but as The Beekeeper of Aleppo shows us, that’s hardly the case.

A gripping story of displaced life as a refugee. This book does a nice job of juxtaposing the beautiful and the ugly in life. Love in a family can be pulled and stretched almost to the breaking point and yet still hold true.

The Beekeeper of Aleppo is an emotional journey, told through the eyes of Nuri, a lifelong resident of Aleppo, Syria, and professional beekeeper. We follow Nuri’s pre-war/pre-exodus life in Syria, interspersed with the story of his perilous flight from his homeland to Western Europe.

As you can imagine, the tale is fraught with danger and uncertainty. Narrowly escaping conscription by ISIS, and clandestine meetings with smugglers and other characters of an underworld borne of violence and extremism - where having the right paperwork and enough money for bribes can make the difference between life and death -, nighttime sea crossings and overfilled, makeshift camps filled with both fellow refugees and those who would prey upon them.

It’s a harrowing, heartbreaking and - somehow still - hopeful story of a man and his family risking their lives and leaving everything they have to escape to someplace where they have a chance at life.

As jarring and ugly as some of the depictions of life in war-torn Aleppo and the hair-raising near-misses along Nuri’s escape were, the thing that truly wrenched my heart was feeling that he was becoming acclimated (and somewhat numb) to the violence and horrors unfolding around him.

It’s a story that needed telling, and I would absolutely encourage you to listen.

I was provided with an electronic copy of #TheBeekeeperOfAleppo by #NetGalley in return for my honest review.

This book was a lot to process. It was at times depressing but this book was so moving. It was a beautifully written story that took on a story that hasn't been told too often.

I didn't realize how sad this book would make me.

My great thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me a copy of this book early in exchange for an honest review.

“Now, standing there with her face so close to mine, I could see the desire, the determination to hold on to an illusion, a vision of life, of Aleppo.”

This novel is a masterpiece of modern history. I'm still processing it, healing the small wound in my chest that it left, hoping to internalize this sliver of connection to humanity. But I will try to find the words to review it for you.

The Beekeeper of Aleppo tells the story of Nuri, a man who once led a simple, beautiful life. He was in business with his cousin and close friend — the bees they lovingly raised produced honey that fueled a small business. His wife, Afra, was an artist. His son was the apple of his eye. Today, they’re in London, attempting to seek asylum from the Syrian civil war. He is a shell of the man he once was, and Afra is blind.

Through intense and heartbreaking flashbacks, we get glimpses into the events that drove them from their home, the things that cannot be unseen, the journey and desperation that got them where they are today. Because the story isn’t told linearly, much of it comes to the audience through revelation, small and large but always eye-opening.

“[Infants] communicated without words from the most primitive part of the soul. I remembered her laughing about this, saying that she felt like an animal [when she breastfed], and how she realized that we are less human in our times of greatest love and greatest fear.”

The pacing and structure of this novel was excellent. We know they made it to London, because that’s where the present-day chapters take place. But how did they get there? How did Nuri become this version of himself? What happened to Afra’s eyes? Who is this character named Mohammad? What happened to them along the way? Where are the parts of themselves that they seem to have left behind? What will happen to them next?

In the author’s note, Christy Lefteri tells us that she volunteered in refugee camps in Athens, Greece, and that’s where the inspiration for this story came from. It’s clear that she witnessed a lot, and they way she molds those observations into a narrative are empathetic and heart-wrenching.

This is a stunning portrait of trauma, a question of what it means to see and experience traumatic things, and a simultaneously devastating and hopeful. It’s easier (and human), when dealing with terrible truths like war, to keep them at a distance. Our brains find it hard to wrap themselves around such terrible truths. This novel breaks down that barrier in a way that helps it resonate deep inside.

A heart wrenching portrayal of the refugee experience. This book will be great book club selection for discussion. It's timely topical, exceptionally written, & an important read at a time in which there is much conflict & immigration in the world. I'm looking forward to including in the next poll for my book club.

4.5 stars

Let me start off by saying that this is a book everyone needs to read, especially given the current environment we live in with the immigration issue at the forefront of topics recently here in the Western part of the world. Though I have read plenty of books over the years about the immigrant experience from different viewpoints, including from the refugee and asylum perspectives, few of those books have been as haunting and affecting as this one. The story of Nuri and Afra and their harrowing journey to escape the conflict in Syria, the tremendous losses they endure one right after the other -- the loss of their home, their livelihoods, their family, their precious child, even their own souls – ordinary citizens caught up in horrible circumstances not of their making, already having to suffer through so much loss and devastation, yet somehow still finding the will to live, to push ahead through the grief and the desperation and finally arrive at their destination, only to face an uncertain future. This is one of those stories that reminded me once again just how much we often take for granted as we go about our daily lives and how we should be so much more grateful than we usually are for everything we do have.

This was a heart-wrenching, emotional read that brought tears to my eyes more than once, yet it was also thought-provoking and relevant to so much of what is going on in the world today. I will admit that it did take me a little while to get used to the book’s unique format (with the last word of each chapter acting as the bridge that starts the flashback to the past in the next chapter), but the beautifully written story as well as the realistically rendered characters (all of whom I adored) more than made up for my brief struggle with the format. Nuri and Afra are characters that I know will stay with me for a long time to come, as the penetrating sadness around their story is one that is difficult to forget. With that said though, there were also moments of hope amidst the desperation, such as when Nuri and Afra finally make it to their destination (not a spoiler, since we are already told this from the very first page) and are met with much kindness from the people they end up staying with at the refugee center as they wait for their asylum applications to be processed. These interactions at the refugee center in present time brought a certain element of hope to the story, which helped to balance out the overwhelming sadness of the past narrative recounting Nuri and Afra’s harrowing journey – at the same time, it made their story all the more poignant and powerful.

Part of what made this story feel so realistic was the fact that the author Christy Lefteri based a lot of it on her previous experience working with refugees as a UNICEF-sponsored volunteer in Athens, Greece. In addition to that though, there was also Lefteri’s personal connection as a daughter of refugees (both her parents fled war-torn Cyprus back in the 1970s), which combined with her volunteer experience to produce such a powerful and inspiring story. I know my review probably doesn’t say a whole lot, but in a way, the vagueness is a bit deliberate, as I feel the story already speaks for itself and nothing I say will be able to do it justice. All I’m going to say is that this book definitely deserves to be read – and sooner rather than later!

Received ARC from Ballantine Books (Random House) via NetGalley.