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

Product Information

But for some, it is a chance to begin living again. Koki, a young villager, feared and hated by her neighbours for her startling red hair, has spent her life in shadow. 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. She can tell them her story of a summer long ago. The young, Turkish shoe-maker who came to the village and took her heart away with him when he left. And how she has longed for him all these years and never known why he left, what took him away. The story is told from the point of view of three individuals, a Greek Cypriot woman with red hair, a Turkish Cypriot man now in the invading Turkish army and an Englishman formerly an RAF pilot stationed in Cyprus. These three characters are connected and we learn how through their memories and them telling their stories to others. All three are more integrated than was usual for their respective communities and have had love affair which crossed racial boundaries. Songbirds” by Christy Lefteri introduces a poacher named Yiannis. The man makes a living trapping the very small protected songbirds that make a stopover in Cyprus on the way to Europe from Africa. I wouldn’t actively seek out further books as they don’t really fall into my preferred genres but they are informative, somewhat disturbing and structured with great research, thought and some personal knowledge.

The book (or part of it) is set during the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus which eventually led to the island being partitioned. Many Greek Cypriots fled and the title is the only three things one couple take from their house when they leave (they were about to cook). I think it is a symbol of the panic and chaos of the time. Christy's latest novel Songbirds will be published by Manilla on 8 July. You can find all of Christy's books on the Suffolk Libraries catalogue.It is July 1974 and on a bright, sunny morning, 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. For 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.

The best bits of this book are the beginning and the end. It starts off with this really fairy-tale like sequence, full of symbolism. It's beautiful, and sad, setting you up to journey through war-torn Cyprus in 1974. Lefteri moves you through the capture of Kyrenia through several viewpoints: Maroulla's childish innocence, Adem Berker's loss and guilt, Richard's longing, Commander Serkan Demir's anger and hatred, Koki's fear. Sometimes it's too much--the core of this story feels like Koki's, the way she's caught between Greeks and Turks, an outcast to both groups as much as she is deeply tied to both. I loved the way Adem's, Richard's and Koki's stories weaved in and out of each other, I didn't care so much about Serkan (Lefteri admitted that he was a rather two-dimensional character without an arc) or what his whole confusing interaction with the baby was about, and whilst I loved the thread of the rose and the petals and the innocent fairy tale of Maroulla that both starts and ends the novel, she wasn't ultimately very important to the story. Whilst she acted as a sort-of impetus for Koki to keep moving, keep trying to survive, I kind of feel that she could have been replaced by anything (or anyone) else. It is July 1974 and on a bright, sunny morning, the Turkish army has invaded the town of Kyrenia in Cyprus. For many people, this means an end to their ordinary lives. But for some, it is a chance to begin living again. On the other hand, her second novel is the story of a married couple forced to flee Syria which was inspired by real accounts of refugees recounted to her while she was volunteering for UNICEF in Athens. Even though her parents loved her very much and she led a very happy childhood, she always sensed that something unsettling had happened to them. For some reason, she intuitively knew that they left because things were not all good and happy.Your book is regularly discussed by book groups and read in libraries by people who could never imagine being in the situation that Nuri and Afra find themselves. What is the message you would like the reader to take away with them? 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. She makes the reader walk in the shoes of victims and perhaps view those seeking asylum in a different way as their journeys are portrayed with great feeling. PDF / EPUB File Name: A_Watermelon_A_Fish_and__a__Bible_-_Christy_Lefteri.pdf, A_Watermelon_A_Fish_and__a__Bible_-_Christy_Lefteri.epub I loved the story in this book and being married to a Cypriot refugee find the story to be close to my heart.

Everyone has always talked about Koki. They never believed she was her father's daughter and her mother died too soon to quiet their wagging tongues. And when she became pregnant and there was no sign of a husband, her fate was sealed. The war destroys everything they care for and they have to flee. However, Afra has seen so many terrible things that they have to go on a perilous journey through Greece and Turkey to start a new and uncertain life in the United Kingdom. She had left her home in Sri Lanka and moved to the Mediterranean island to make money to support the daughter she left behind. But one evening, Nisha steps out of the house to go run an errand and disappears. Readers in Suffolk will be familiar with your novel The Beekeeper of Aleppo. How did you find Nuri's voice in the book and what was it like to write? Was there anything you nearly left out of the final version? 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.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. The above description sums up the extent of the plot, with the addition of a few unexpected turns. It is not developed much further, but the core of the novel focuses on the descriptions of life in the village and it's inhabitants. I also enjoyed the sharp contrasts between the cultures of the people living in Cyprus to those in London. Lefteri also captures the hidden differences as well and the obvious ones in her scenery portraits. The author does not shy away from showing the horrors of war or of community disapproval of inter-racial relationships, but most of the worst horrors take place offstage. This is an effective way of showing them without dwelling on them and of giving them impact. The focus is on the island and its people, and on living and loving through difficult circumstances. The message of that book is essentially that if there was more friendliness and integration between the different ethnic communities and less intolerance and strife, then everything in Aphrodite's garden would be lovely. This is trite, but it is also true, and the author puts across that message effectively by telling the story from each community.