Songbirds
The powerful novel from the author of The Beekeeper of Aleppo and The Book of Fire
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
'Will break your heart and open your eyes' Heather Morris, author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz
'I've never read anything quite like Songbirds - a beautifully crafted novel.' Jodi Picoult, bestselling author of Wish You Were Here.
Her courage to cross oceans.
Her hope for a better life.
Her love for a daughter, above all else.
Not all tragedies make headlines, not every voice is heard.
Nisha has crossed oceans to give her child a future. Now she spends her days caring for someone else's daughter while her own waits for her return, half a world away.
For Petra, it is only natural to hire a domestic worker to keep her house clean and her family fed. Their lives have nothing in common, except the love they feel for their daughters.
Then one day, Nisha vanishes. No one cares about the disappearance of a foreign domestic worker, except Petra and Nisha's secret lover, Yiannis, the only connection to her daughter back in Sri Lanka.
As Petra and Yiannis desperately search for Nisha, they realise how little they knew about her. What they uncover will change them both forever.
Inspired by true stories of love and loss, hope and refuge, this evocative masterpiece from the million-copy bestselling author of The Beekeeper of Aleppo, Christy Lefteri, is an illuminating story of the power of the human spirit, and the enduring love of a mother for her child, that will stay with you long after you finish reading.
Praise for Christy Lefteri:
'This thought-provoking novel of love loss and redemption is thoroughly sublime.' Caroline Montague
'Lefteri is an astonishing weaver of stories.' Daljit Nagra
' . . . broke my heart and kept me turning the pages of her gorgeous novel well into the night.' Alka Joshi, NYT-bestselling author of The Henna Artist and The Secret Keeper of Jaipur
'Christy Lefteri has crafted a beautiful novel, intelligent, thoughtful, and relevant.' Benjamin Zephaniah on The Beekeeper of Aleppo
' . . . it's impossible not to be moved by Lefteri's plea for humanity and perhaps inspired too.' Observer, on The Beekeeper of Aleppo
'Courageous, proactive, haunting.' Heather Morris, on The Beekeeper of Aleppo
***DON'T MISS CHRISTY LEFTERI'S MOVING AND CAPTIVATING NEW NOVEL: THE BOOK OF FIRE, OUT NOW!***
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Christy Lefteri’s 2019’s novel The Beekeeper of Aleppo was both a prizewinner and a bestseller, and in this follow-up the author once again uses fiction to highlight a real-world issue with enormous gravity. At the beginning of the book, we know that Nisha, a maid raising somebody else’s child in Cyprus, far from the beloved daughter she is working to support in Sri Lanka, is missing. We learn about Nisha through Petra, her employer, and Yiannis, the man who loves her, as they try to solve the mystery of her disappearance. With the police unwilling to help, Petra is forced to confront the maltreatment—and often near invisibility—of the migrant women who are relied on to keep her community going. Lefteri’s prose, while heartbreaking, is also full of soul.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lefteri (The Beekeeper of Aleppo) spins an affecting if didactic story of a woman's mysterious disappearance from Cyprus. Left to piece together the story of Nisha's absence are those who know her best: Petra, whom Nisha works for as a house cleaner, nanny, and cook; and Yiannis, a poacher, who is in a secret relationship with Nisha. As the mystery unfolds, more is revealed of the life Nisha left behind seven years earlier in Sri Lanka—including her two-year-old daughter, Kumari, with whom she has been able to speak only through Yiannis's iPad in the middle of the night. Meanwhile Yiannis wishes he could quit poaching, but he would suffer violent consequences by walking away from his employers; and Petra, a privileged woman who has never formed a bond with her daughter, begins to realize how she'd neglected Nisha's well-being. Woven throughout are beautiful descriptions of nature, such as the songbirds endangered by Yiannis and other poachers. As the two gradually piece together what happened to Nisha, Lefteri surveys hiring practices that exploit immigrants, as well as law enforcement's dismissiveness toward Nisha's case ("These people don't care about their families.... That's why they are able to come here"). While heavy-handed in its message, the novel is beautifully written and moving. Lefteri's fans won't be disappointed.
