The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christie Lefteri

People all over the world are being displaced by war, famine and disease and many countries are experiencing a rise in numbers of migrants seeking a place of safety.

Here in the UK, thousands of people have arrived on small boats and every news bulletin tots up the cost of finding them somewhere to stay until they have been processed. The numbers are overwhelming the official process that was designed to help them, and because there are so many, it is easy to forget that each individual person has a terrible background story that has bought them such a long way from home.

The Beekeeper of Aleppo reminds us that the migrants just want somewhere safe to live, and most of them would probably have preferred to stay in their own country, but sometimes there is simply no choice. You either run or you die and you have to be desperate to even contemplate journeys such as these.

The author, Christy Lefteri, does not preach about the politics but simply tells a story of one man and his family and their struggle to move from Syria to the United Kingdom. All they want is to be reunited with the only family they have left, and the only options open to them are illegal. This story is fiction but there are countless other stories like it that are not.

Comments

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