The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri

This was a book I picked up in a charity shop as it jumped out at me as a well-known book that I had not read. I knew it was a novel but based on significant research and real peoples’ stories.

I didn’t know what to expect but the book charts the story of Nuri and his wife, Afra who live just outside Aleppo in Syria and they watch as the nation falls apart and the President cracks down heavily on dissent and others rise up to challenge this. They themselves are just ordinary citizens going about their daily lives but Nuri chooses to be a beekeeper than take over the family business, a fabric and material shop in the town.

Like many people in situations like Syria they believe that they will be fine and kind of hold on to the belief that things will get better when in reality everything in front of them is telling the opposite story and when they finally realise it is all over and they need to get out they have left it just a little too late.

The story is written from their current situation, in limbo, seeking asylum and living in a B&B somewhere on the south coast of England with constant flashbacks to their journey from Syria, through Turkey, onto Greece and eventually to the UK where they at least have some contacts.

It is a true representation of just how dreadful the journey is, not shying away from all the hardships, the pain, the tedium and the lack of hope that they experience. They are truly just ordinary people caught up in something that was not of their own making and finding themselves in situations they would never have dreamed of and were not prepared for.

I think it is a very good read and a very good representation of what it is to be a refugee, to be a person who had everything and now just has to survive!

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