The Beekeeper of Aleppo in Reading with Style

Aug 20, 2019 Krista rated it it was amazing

Shelves: setting-eu-england, 2019-books-read, fiction, time-2010-2019, military-war, literary-fiction, mental-health-fiction, family-interactions, setting-middle-east, kindle-netgalley

Rating: 5 brilliantly buzzing stars

What a luminous and heartbreaking book about war and the effects on the people caught in its crosshairs. While this is often a tough read because of the circumstances that Afra and Nuri have to navigate, I highly recommend this to anyone who is interested in learning more about the conditions faced by refugees from Syria as they try to flee to safer ground.

I didn’t realize all the hurdles and intermediate stops that emigrants and refugees from Syria could face Rating: 5 brilliantly buzzing stars

What a luminous and heartbreaking book about war and the effects on the people caught in its crosshairs. While this is often a tough read because of the circumstances that Afra and Nuri have to navigate, I highly recommend this to anyone who is interested in learning more about the conditions faced by refugees from Syria as they try to flee to safer ground.

I didn’t realize all the hurdles and intermediate stops that emigrants and refugees from Syria could face as they try to make a new life for themselves far from all they’ve known. This story so warmly shares the love that the beekeeper Nuri, his artist wife Afra, and their young son, Sami have for the town of Aleppo and the life they lived there. Then war comes crashing in and everything disintegrates. The vibrant colorful city is caked in layers of gray cement dust. Nuri and his cousin Mustafa’s beloved beehives are torched one day by one side or the other in the war. It doesn’t matter who did it, the bees from 500 beehives are gone. Killings are brutal and random. Life is cheap.

Eventually Nuri convinces the now blind Afra to leave Syria and try to join Mustafa and his remaining family in England. Many harrowing legs of this journey, and the intermediate way-stations are encountered in fits and starts. The desperation to leave, and the luck-of-the-draw randomness of who eventually arrives at their destination is written in lovely prose and thoughtful descriptions. No-one arrives unscathed by the experience, but still the human will to survive and thrive pushes them forward.

The Author’s Note at the end of the book described the author’s point of view that this was a book about blindness. I’d agree. It’s about Afra’s literal blindness, Nuri’s emotional blindness, and the majority of the world’s willful blindness to the tragedies of the refugee crises going on plain site.

This should be recommended reading for everyone. The intelligence and heart with which this story is told was harrowing and uplifting at the same time.

‘Thank-You’ to NetGalley; the publisher, Random House Publishing Group, Ballantine Books; and the author Christy Lefteri; for providing a free e-ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
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Sep 18, 2022 Kim rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 5-star, audio, war, europe, literary-fiction

This was a powerful book, one that I would think about for days, and possibly reread in the future. Set against the backdrop of the civil war that broke out in Syria in 2011, it is the heartbreaking story of Nuri, a beekeeper, and his artist wife, Afra, who must flee their country and find a way to make a new life for themselves elsewhere, while dealing with severe PTSD and blindness after losing the small son, Sami.
I listened to the audio version of this, which had the advantage of hearing the ...more

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Jul 29, 2021 Helen Bungert rated it it was amazing

This is one of those books every American should read. These refugees have lost everything - family, home, professions. They are damaged, they are frightened, and they continue on. A heart- breaking gem of a book.

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