Christy Lefteri: On Using Research to Help Storytelling
Brought up in London, Christy Lefteri is the child of Cypriot refugees. She holds a PhD in creative writing from Brunel University, where she was a lecturer for many years. She is the author of Songbirds and the international bestseller The Beekeeper of Aleppo, which won the Aspen Words Literary Prize and was the runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Her first novel, A Watermelon, a Fish and a Bible, was longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
Christy Lefteri (Photo credit: Kieron Coatman)
In this post, Lefteri shares what inspired her most recent novel, how she conducts research, and more.
Name: Christy Lefteri
Book title: The Book of Fire
Publisher: Berkley Publishing
Release date: January 2, 2024
Genre/category: Literary Fiction
Elevator pitch for the book: Gorgeously written, sweeping in scope and intimate in tone, The Book of Fire is a masterful work about the search for meaning in the wake of tragedy, as well as the universal ties that bind people together, and to the land that they call home.
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What prompted you to write this book?
While I was working as a volunteer at a refugee center in Athens in 2017, I witnessed a wildfire happening in a nearby town. Though I was far away, the experience stayed with me. When I returned to the UK, I followed the news and saw how bad the wildfires in Greece and in other parts of the world were becoming. I have family in Greece and I was compelled to go to there and learn and understand as much I could. News coverage can be overwhelming and full of crisis imagery which can sometimes make us detach from real events.
Storytelling can have the power to draw someone into the lives of people who have lived through something, it can personalize events and help the reader to walk in the shoes of one person or one family, and because of this I felt that I wanted to research and then write a story that would put the reader in the shoes of the characters. I wanted to show how climate change affects people and families in a real way.
I stayed in Mati and spoke to survivors and learnt about what they had been through. I didn’t know then that the fires would become even worse.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
I took roughly two years. It took about six months to do the main part of the research, which I call my field research—this involves traveling to a place, interviewing people, reading firsthand accounts. After that I had a lot of reading and background research to do—articles, scientific papers, interviewing scientists.
Although I do continue my research throughout the entire novel, I need to have enough information before I can actually begin writing. I did all this while I was pregnant, then I began to write two months after my little girl was born and I finished writing about eight months later. After that came the editing process.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
The thing that surprised me was that most people I interviewed in Greece were against talking about climate change. It made me realize that sometimes, during times of extreme trauma, people find it more reassuring to put all the blame on tangible things. This I found surprising but understandable.
I then made the decision to bring what I had learnt into the writing of the novel. The fire is the result of an accumulation of cascading circumstances which has set our world on fire. In the story, however, it is easier to put all the blame on one man. There is both an individual and collective responsibility for the consequences of the fire, and I felt that it was important for me to explore both sides.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
As always, I hope readers will see and feel the human story, I hope that they will love this family and go on a journey with them as they attempt to recover from their terrible trauma. I hope that they will feel what has been lost and walk with the characters as they understand their new life.
I hope, also, that the reader will think about blame and how it is attributed. There is a message in the book about how we, as humans, can be destructive to this beautiful planet that is our only home—be it war or our own contributing to global warming.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Whatever you are writing, even if it is a story about your own back garden, go out there and do lots of research.
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