"Blazing with a family’s impulse to survive and rise from the ashes of destruction, this remarkable Greece-set novel is intimate, epic, and exhilaratingly absorbing."
If you loved Christy Lefteri’s The Beekeeper of Aleppo, The Book of Fire will surely also have you in its thrall. Beautifully-written, it sees a family forced to redefine and rebuild a sense of home and hope in the wake of a cataclysmic fire.
The story opens with an assertion of the importance of community (the ancient Greek polis), and mention of an outsider who wasn’t much-liked in the village even before he started a catastrophic fire. Then we meet musician Irini, her husband Tasso, who paints the surrounding ancient forest, and their daughter Chara.
So far, so blissful, until a wild fire engulfs the forest and village, forcing families to flee, resulting in devastating loss and deep scarring. When Irini discovers the body of the man who started the fire, she makes a decision that will haunt her through the years, while her husband is haunted by the loss of his father.
I was utterly swept up by the story, the rich language, the drama, and the dynamics of an unforgettable Greek family who have much to mourn, much to recover from, and, as things turn out, many reasons to love and renew themselves. Then there’s the contextual themes of greed, humankind’s destructive impulses, the bonds that bind us, kindness and love, here conveyed in compelling style.
This morning, I met the man who started the fire. He did something terrible, but then, so have I. I left him. I left him and now he may be dead.
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 in a tiny Greek village: 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 region'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, and the costs of survival in our changing world, but also - and ultimately - our powers of redemption and renewal.
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
Author
About Christy Lefteri
Christy Lefteri was born in London in 1980 to Greek Cypriot parents who moved to London in 1974 during the Turkish invasion. She completed a degree in English and a Masters in creative writing at Brunel University. She taught English to foreign students and then became a secondary school teacher before leaving to pursue a PhD and to write. She is also studying to become a psychotherapist.
