A Song of Bees

A lyrical coming-of-age story rooted in the fragile and unique setting of the world’s oldest and largest communal beehive in the High Atlas Mountains of Marocco.

A child growing up in a disappearing ecosystem and fractured family. Ten-year-old Anir lives in Inzerki, a Berber village high in Morocco's Atlas Mountains. He spends his days watching eagles wheel overhead, listening to his grandfather's stories, and helping to care for the Saint’s Beehive that clings to the mountainside above the village. For generations, the people have lived off the land, tending bees and working the dry red earth. But the seasons are changing. The rains no longer come as they once did. The wells are running low. And in the sacred hive, the bees are beginning to die.

As the village struggles to confront an uncertain future, Anir also struggles with the secrets of his own family. Why does his mother, alone in her room, say nothing but sing the same haunting lullaby? And why does his father disappear for weeks at a time to work in the city, despite how unhappy it makes him? Set against the breathtaking landscape of the High Atlas, this luminous novel is an intimate family story and a powerful portrait of a community facing a world in transformation.