Summary

Chapter 1 opens in London, England. The novel’s narrator is a Syrian man named Nuri Ibrahim. He and his wife Afra have escaped from Syria and have arrived in London after a long and very difficult journey. They are currently living in a refugee lodge and are waiting to learn if they will be granted asylum status. Afra appears to have become blind relatively recently, which saddens Afra and Nuri. Nuri has begun to suffer from nightmares in which he kills a man. The novel does not yet state the cause of Afra’s blindness or Nuri’s dreams.

The novel then shifts to the chronological beginning of the main narrative. Nuri and Afra had a happy life in Aleppo, Syria, with their seven-year-old son Sami. Nuri works as a beekeeper alongside an older, more experienced beekeeper named Mustafa. Mustafa used to be a...