The Beekeeper of Sinjar
by Dunya Mikhail
(Serpent's Tail, £10.99)

AN ACCOUNT of lives destroyed and saved amid the chaos of northern Iraq and Syria, Dunya Mikhail's The Beekeeper of Sinjar has echoes of Thomas Keneally’s Schindler’s Ark.

[[{"fid":"6362","view_mode":"inlineright","fields":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false},"link_text":null,"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false}},"attributes":{"class":"media-element file-inlineright","data-delta":"1"}}]]In his work of creative non-fiction, the eponymous beekeeper Abdullah Sherem risks his life daily to rescue the Yazidi women of northern Iraq who are kidnapped, subjugated and enslaved by Daesh.

Their struggles are explored through telephone conversations between Mikhail —an Iraqi poet now living and teaching in the US — and Sherem, who recounts the harrowing stories of women and girls he’s met and smuggled to safety.

We learn of the unimaginable brutality of Daesh and the suffering its medieval-minded ideology has brought to thousands of lives in the Middle East. The emotional agony of families torn apart, the destruction of countless livelihoods, rape, live burial, beheading and starvation are all grimly present.

But there are also stories of heroism — of ordinary people, in extraordinary circumstances, finding the courage to help those at risk through hiding them and deceiving Daeshis, who are sometimes members of their own family.

We learn too that Sherem himself has been rescued by the People’s Defence Brigades (YPG), a formidable fighting force mainly composed of women who defended a road along which thousands fled from Iraq to Syria.

These stories are interspersed with some of Mikhail’s touching poetry, which lifts a text otherwise busy with detail. Yet it doesn’t quite prevent the book’s noble endeavour — weaving a single story from many tragedies — from diluting its narrative thrust. We glimpse, starkly but briefly, the adversities of numerous people and that proves somewhat overwhelming.

One can’t help but think that focusing instead on just one poignant story of escape and rescue would invoke a deeper understanding of the humanitarian disaster happening before our very eyes.