The Murmur of Bees
In a small Mexican town in the early years of the twentieth century, the elderly nanny Reja finds an abandoned newborn beneath a bridge, his face disfigured by a cleft and his body covered by a swarm of bees. The Morales family, prosperous citrus growers in Linares, take the child in and name him Simonopio. Mute, surrounded all his life by his bees, Simonopio grows up with an uncanny ability to see what is coming: the Spanish flu that will sweep their region, the pistolero who threatens the family from a neighboring ranch, and the small acts of kindness that will save them. Sofia Segovia's novel, translated from the Spanish by Simon Bruni, weaves the Morales family saga across the Mexican Revolution and the agrarian reforms that follow, telling a multigenerational story about land, language, and the fragile boundaries between the natural and supernatural worlds.
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In 1910, the elderly nanny of the wealthy Morales family of Linares walks home with a baby she found under a bridge, his face wrapped in a blanket of bees. The family takes him in as Simonopio, and he grows up speaking little but carrying a strange foresight as the Mexican Revolution comes north.
The Murmur of Bees was written by Sofia Segovia and originally published in Spanish as El murmullo de las abejas in 2015. The English translation by Simon Bruni was released in 2019.
Yes. The Murmur of Bees is a magical realist novel set in early 20th-century Mexico, following a foundling boy with a strange connection to bees. It is widely cited alongside Like Water for Chocolate as a defining Mexican magical realist work.
The Murmur of Bees is 476 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Murmur of Bees takes most readers 7 to 10 hours to finish.
The Murmur of Bees is a standalone novel by Sofia Segovia, not part of a series.
The Murmur of Bees is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
