A current of metatextuality runs through this, in that one textual form (the novel) is used to present issues with other kinds of textuality elsewhere in its pages. The Beekeeper of Aleppo rejects these stereotypes through depictions showing how words and paper, and not just physical violence, are culpable in spreading xenophobia. They are often responsible for the dangerous dispersal of negative stereotypes based on intolerance. As the essay collection, Images of Immigrants and Refugees in Western Europe (also published in 2019) shows, the tabloid press has a major role in shaping how the general British public visualise the categories of ‘migrant’, ‘asylum seeker’, and ‘refugee’. It challenges preconceptions about these experiences by presenting an intimate vision of characters who are members of a specific, loving family before becoming simply ‘refugees’. The novel is timely in its questioning of readers’ assumptions about the lives of refugees in the modern world. Her novel, The Beekeeper of Aleppo (2019), narrates the harrowing story of a Syrian couple, Afra and Nuri, as they travel to the UK. The prose of Christy Lefteri is committed to recognising the lives of people made homeless by conflicts in the Middle East, including Cyprus and Syria. Yet, the opposite is just as true, as postcolonial theory must always acknowledge the ways in which it has been shaped by modern refugee writing. As Claire Gallien reminds us, scholarship should ‘reiterate the specific contribution of postcolonial theory to the study of refugee literature’ (721). She is also studying to become a psychotherapist.Postcolonial studies and refugee writing are two fields with significant points of mutual influence. She taught English to foreign students and then became a secondary school teacher before leaving to pursue a PhD and to write. She completed a degree in English and a Masters in creative writing at Brunel University. Much more than a beach read, this is a powerful well constructed piece of writing - Joclyn Manners FemaleFirst book criticĬhristy Lefteri was born in London in 1980 to Greek Cypriot parents who moved to London in 1974 during the Turkish invasion. It makes you want to know more about Cyprus and its history, and to be able to recount what happened to Koki and Maroulla to the sometimes violent past of such a beautiful island and it's people. Even so it is beautifully written, and explores whether the main characters can come to terms with their past and present. There book contains accounts of violent and distressing scenes, including some of the group of women being taken off to be gang raped and returned battered and bleeding. Our Opinion: A debut novel, by an author who was born in 1980 to Greek Cypriot parents living in exile in London, very powerful and moving – Written so well the reader strikes an empithy with the characters, feeling the anger, sorrow and anguish about what was happening to them. And so, by cover of darkness, he searches every house, every pathway for a glimpse of that head of flames.įor Richard, growing old and grey in a dank bedsit in the centre of London, where the underground trains shake the foundations, the invasion of Cyprus stirs memories of his time as a British pilot, of a woman, a child and a secret it is becoming all too difficult to keep. Waiting for a chance to return, his only thought has been of her. And how she has longed for him all these years and never known why he left, what took him away.Īdem Berker is a Turkish soldier and for him, the invasion of his former home is an opportunity to seek out the woman he has loved for so many years. The young, Turkish shoe-maker who came to the village and took her heart away with him when he left. She can tell them her story of a summer long ago. But held captive in the house to which the women of Kyrenia have been brought, she can at last speak to them as an equal. Koki, a young villager, feared and hated by her neighbours for her startling red hair, has spent her life in shadow. For many people, this means an end to life as they know it.īut for some, it is a chance to begin living again.
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