Sometimes there are just books that you have to read. Whether they tell stories that are difficult to hear or perhaps they drive you out of your comfort zone - making you feel uncomfortable. Those are the stories everyone should listen to.
Nuri is a beekeeper from Aleppo, Syria. His wife, Afra, is an incredible artist. When war tears through their beloved Syria, threatening to destroy everything they have - the couple make the dangerous and life changing journey to the United Kingdom. The war in Syria took everything they had, their journey through Turkey and Greece threatens to destroy everything they are and everything they are fighting for. Described and told throughout their journey are experiences of the best and worst of humanity, heart-breaking confrontations with grief, as well as the power of the human spirit and its ability to help you find your way back to yourself. With strong themes of loss and grief, the delicate nature of hope and will to survive has never been so important.
The Beekeeper of Aleppo is one of my favourite, and most important, books I have read in 2020. Fact. No review that anyone could write ever can do this book justice, I plead with you to buy it and experience the journey for yourself. A quick trigger warning, this book discusses topics including: PTSD, self-harm, sexual assault, character death and alludes to child prostitution.
I know that the factual and personal experience of the author of books like this is very important, so I'll just quickly mention that Christy Lefteri is the child of two Cypriot refugees and she has first-hand experience in humanitarian volunteering in Greece. Here she helped and talked with refugees that had travelled to Greece, from places including Syria, in the hope of safety. The Beekeeper of Aleppo is a work of fiction but she took inspiration from the stories that refugees had told her as well as incorporating (and renaming) real-life organisations that exist to help refugees as well as referring to factual places refugees travelled to in their quest for safety.
The format of the story aids for seamless switching between the present and the past, allowing the story to cover a large timeline without the story becoming too long. Each chapter starts with Nuri in the United Kingdom, as he and Afra await to be granted asylum, here we read about the couples struggles to adjust to life in the UK and come to terms with the journey that brought them here. Within each chapter, the present will trail off to one singular word, which will then link that same moment to an event that happened in the past - we then travel there and pick up from that moment in their journey to the UK. This element of storytelling allows the reader to experience first-hand, an element of Nuri's thought process behind his PTSD.
I'm not quite sure how Lefteri managed it, but these are honestly the quickest long chapters I've ever read in a book. The chapters are around 20 to 30 pages but the pacing makes them feel much shorter than that. We travel through many places throughout this book, meeting the best and worst of humanity as we do, and the sensory description never falters - whether it's the heat and smells of a pre-war-torn Aleppo, or central Athens on the brink, it feels real and it's heart-breaking (I cried throughout most of the book).
The themes of loss and grief are so powerful throughout, they are almost tangible to the reader - as if you can feel it building within yourself even though you could never truly feel it. Nuri and Afra's yearning settles deep into the heart of the reader, the exhaustion that comes along with their journey and the constant presence of heartbreak and destruction are there as well. The delicate nature of hope and how quickly it can only be built and snatched away, how circumstances and situations can break even the strongest of units. Desperation and the human ability to do what needs to be done to survive, and how people take advantage of that. I cannot stress to you how important this book is. Go. And. Buy. It.
If I was to have a criticism, for me the book ended a little abruptly. I would have liked to have seen more time taken with the ending, especially since Nuri's trauma was leading up to this specific break throughout the whole book.
I know this is brief, I didn't really want to go into much detail because the journey itself is incredibly important and such an experience to read - I didn't want to ruin it. This is a book for you to read and be with Nuri and Afra on their journey.
Have you read The Beekeeper of Aleppo? If not, go and get it.
Thanks for reading, Rhi x.
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