The Book of Fire by Christy Lefteri
Synopsis
This morning, I met the man who started the fire. You see, he was the onewho took it all away, all of life as I knew it. He stole the world...
Once upon a time there was a beautiful village that held a million stories of love and loss and peace and war, and it was swallowed up by a fire that blazed up to the sky.
The fire ran all the way down to the sea where it met with its reflection.
A family from two nations, England and Greece, live a simple life on a tiny Greek island: Irini, Tasso and their daughter, lovely, sweet Chara, whose name means joy. Their life goes up in flames in a single day when one man starts a fire out of greed and indifference. Many are killed, homes are destroyed, and the island's natural beauty wiped out.
In the wake of the fire, Chara bears deep scars across her back and arms. Tasso is frozen in trauma, devastated that he wasn't there when his family most needed him. And Irini is crippled by guilt at her part in the fate of the man who started the fire.But this family has survived, and slowly green shoots of hope and renewal will grow from the smouldering ruins of devastation.
Once again, Christy Lefteri has crafted a novel which is intimate and epic, sweeping and delicate. The Book of Fire explores not only the damage wrought by human folly, but also - and ultimately - our powers of redemption and renewal.
Reviews
Christy Lefteri is a writer of huge power, who writes with great delicacy and urgency, making us see the world around us through fresh eyes. ? Heather Morris, international bestselling author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz
The Book of Fire is the work of a seasoned and wise storyteller who is as masterfully attuned to the nuances of trauma as she is adept at uncovering hope and resilience. Christy Lefteri is at the height of her powers with this radiant and moving novel. ? Adrienne Brodeur, bestselling author of Wild Game and Little Monsters
Christy Lefteri's beautiful new novel, The Book of Fire,is a compelling story of love, loss, and redemption in the face of unimaginable tragedy. As with The Beekeeper of Aleppo, Christy transports the reader to a once lush and now destroyed world, where a community-and a mother-- must fight to regain what has been lost. Uniquely crafted and full of both stunning imagery and human emotion, The Book of Fire is a story that will long remain in the reader's mind. ? Kristen Hannah
The Book of Fire is a wonderfully engrossing and moving novel that explores with great tenderness the need for answers in the face of terrible loss and the desire for recovery from environmental devastation. ? Peter Stott, author of Hot Air
A compelling, at times anguished, at-a-sitting exploration of trauma, complicity, justice and how to live in our rapacious, heating age' ? Daily Mail
About the Author
Brought up in London, Christy Lefteri is the child of Cypriot refugees. Her novel, The Beekeeper of Aleppo, is an international bestseller, selling well over a million copies worldwide and published in over 40 countries. The Beekeeper of Aleppo won The Aspen Literary Prize, runner up for The Dayton Literary Prizeand won the Prix de l'Union Interalliée for Best Foreign novel in France. It is currently being performed as a play, adapted by Nesrin Alrefaai, and Matthew Spangler for The Nottingham Playhouse, and touring the UK. Songbirds, her follow up novel, was a Sunday Times and international bestseller.