A Watermelon, a Fish and a Bible: A heartwarming tale of love amid war

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On the way to Europe, Nuri is comforted by knowing that his business partner and cousin Mustafa is waiting for them. He has recently established an apiary and has been training Syrian refugees on how to keep bees in Yorkshire. Who were your literary heroes as you were growing up and when did you first realise that you wanted to write? It is July 1974 and on the Turkish army has invaded the town of Kyrenia in Cyprus. For many people, this means an end to life as they know it. But for some, it is a chance to begin living again. No matter what story I’m writing, whatever the circumstances are, it is the bond and the love between people, between friends, between a parent and child, a husband and a wife, that is the real heart of the story. For one young woman who grew up without a mother who had always been an outcast in the community, the invasion presents a chance to share her story.

Christy has a very poetic form of writing with lots of personification, vivid imagery and alliteration used to excellent effect. The book contains a lot of tragedy and violence. It is a sad tale of rejection and death. There is a fair amount of bad language and some blasphemy which I didn't appreciate. There is no graphic sexual detail although rape is eluded to and the after effects are obvious in the telling of the story. There is a lot of violence, it is not disturbingly graphic, just sad. I was pulled in by the title of this book, which, believe it or not, does relate to the story. Lefteri's prose is stunning. Her language shines with life and drew vibrant images to my mind when I read this book. Her descriptions compile most of the novel and they are definitely the highlight. In general, I tend to be bored with books centered around the descriptions of a particular place and time, and built up with details of the characters, and that don't really have a plot, but I wasn't. The author's style is so detailed that I could practically feel the hot summer wind and smell the egg-lemon soup.The police believe she is just another runaway house help but Petra her employer thinks there is more to it. Petra’s investigations lead her to the many friends Nisha had working as nannies in the neighboring houses. The novel “A Watermelon, a Fish and a Bible” takes its inspiration from the lives of her parents that lived as refugees in England. She gets to learn the darker elements of life as an immigrant and the stark choices that often leave them captive, vulnerable, or worse. I’m not sure if there is anything I nearly left out, but there is something I definitely left out and those were chapters that I had written from Afra’s perspective. I decided that I didn’t want to include them, that I wanted Afra’s strength to be revealed in the story slowly and subtly. I like it that when people read it they think at first that Nuri is the stronger of the two but later discover that it is in fact Afra with her deep, quiet strength.

The human stories behind news images of Syrian war refugees emerge in a novel both touching and terrifying. As Afra and Nuri travel across a landscape broken by the war, they have to confront not only their own unspeakable loss and pain but a lot of danger.No I can’t really say that there is. However, I would say that every book that I have read has changed me in some small way.