Christy Lefteri

About

Christy Lefteri is a British-Cypriot novelist born and raised in London to Cypriot parents. She studied creative writing at Brunel University and later worked as a volunteer at a refugee centre in Athens, an experience that profoundly influenced her fiction. Her novels explore displacement, migration, grief, resilience, and the human consequences of war and political upheaval. She is best known for The Beekeeper of Aleppo (2019), which follows a Syrian couple forced to flee their home during the civil war and confronts the emotional realities of seeking refuge in Europe. The novel became an international bestseller and won the Aspen Words Literary Prize in 2020. Her other works include The Fig Tree (2019), which examines the division of Cyprus through the relationship between a Greek Cypriot girl and a Turkish Cypriot boy, and Songbirds (2021), which explores the lives of migrant domestic workers in Cyprus. Lefteri’s emotionally compelling storytelling highlights the dignity, vulnerability, and resilience of people whose lives are shaped by conflict and migration.