The Beekeeper of Aleppo Study Guide

Christy Lefteri was born in London in 1980 to Cypriot refugees. Her father served as a commanding officer during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 and eventually left the country for reasons of personal safety. As a result, Lefteri grew up sensing that her parents had lost something significant and watching her father struggle with undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder. Lefteri worked as a psychoanalyst until she became interested in writing as a means to express trauma. In 2010, she earned a PhD in creative writing from Brunel University, where she taught as a lecturer for many years. The Beekeeper of Aleppo (2019) was Lefteri’s second book and won the 2020 Aspen Words Literary Prize. The novel is based in part on the author’s experiences volunteering at a refugee center in Athens in 2016 and 2017. During that time, she witnessed heartbreaking human suffering and resiliency. While writing the book, she consulted Syrian refugees who vetted her manuscript for authenticity. Lefteri’s other works include her first novel, A Watermelon, a Fish and a Bible (2010), about the Cyprus war; Songbirds (2021), about migrant domestic workers in Cyprus; and The Book of Fire (2023) about climate change and forest fires in Greece. Lefteri lives and writes in North London.

The events leading to the Syrian Civil War began in March of 2011, when President Bashar al-Assad violently suppressed protests against the secular Ba’athist government and pro-democracy rallies. The resultant deaths numbered in the thousands, spurring the formation of resistance militias across the country. Today, numerous factions continue to fight against one another, including the Syrian Arab Armed Forces (aligned with the Assad government), the pro-democracy Syrian Interim Government, and various Jihadist organizations including the Islamic State, also referred to as Daesh. Weapons in use include cluster bombs, ballistic missiles, and chemical warfare. In addition, the United Nations has recognized the rampant violation of human rights during the war, committed by both the Syrian government and the rebels. The ongoing violence has caused the displacement of 13.5 million citizens out of the country’s pre-war population of 22 million. Around six million of these are internally displaced, while five million sought asylum in other countries or Syrian refugee camps. To this day, it is considered one of the largest refugee crises in history. Regardless of where they are living, the vast majority of refugees live below the poverty line, struggling to attain food, housing, and other basic needs for their families. The United Kingdom’s reluctance to accept Syrian refugees has come under much criticism from human rights groups. As of 2023, the country has only granted asylum to just over 5,000 refugees.

The Beekeeper of Aleppo (2019) is just one of many recently published books relating to immigrant and refugee experiences. This influx of literature likely has to do with the fact that more people are currently displaced from their homes worldwide than ever before due to a wide variety of conflicts, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Afghan-American novelist Khaled Hosseini has written several books about the plights of Middle Eastern refugees, including The Kite Runner (2003) and Sea Prayer (2018), a short but evocative book inspired by the death of a young Syrian boy named Alan Kurdi. Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017) leans further into the surreal and the magical with his tale of Syrian lovers who choose to leave their country by means of a mysterious door that whisks them far away. Atia Awabi’s young adult novel, A Land of Permanent Goodbyes (2018), presents the violence of war from the perspective of a young person thrust into adult conflict. Outside of fiction, Don Brown’s graphic novel The Unwanted: Stories of Syrian Refugees (2018) explores true tales of living in and escaping from a war zone. Finally, Nujeen Mustafa’s memoir, Nujeen: One Girl’s Incredible Journey from War-Torn Syria in a Wheelchair (2016), chronicles the author’s experiences making her way from Syria to Germany while coping with cerebral palsy.