There Are Rivers in the Sky: A novel
From the Booker Prize finalist, author of The Island of Missing Trees, an enchanting new tale about three characters living along two great rivers, all connected by a single drop of water. "Make place for Elif Shafak on your bookshelf. Make place for her in your heart too. You won't regret it."--Arundhati Roy, winner of the Booker Prize In the ancient city of Nineveh, on the bank of the River Tigris, King Ashurbanipal of Mesopotamia, erudite but ruthless, built a great library that would crumble with the end of his reign. From its ruins, however, emerged a poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, that would infuse the existence of two rivers and bind together three lives. In 1840 London, Arthur is born beside the stinking, sewage-filled River Thames. With an abusive, alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother, Arthur's only chance of escaping destitution is his brilliant memory. When his gift earns him a spot as an apprentice at a leading publisher, Arthur's world opens up far beyond the slums, and one book in particular catches his interest: Nineveh and Its Remains. In 2014 Turkey, Narin, a ten-year-old Yazidi girl, is diagnosed with a rare disorder that will soon cause her to go deaf. Before that happens, her grandmother is determined to baptize her in a sacred Iraqi temple. But with the rising presence of ISIS and the destruction of the family's ancestral lands along the Tigris, Narin is running out of time. In 2018 London, the newly divorced Zaleekah, a hydrologist, moves into a houseboat on the Thames to escape her husband. Orphaned and raised by her wealthy uncle, Zaleekah had made the decision to take her own life in one month, until a curious book about her homeland changes everything. A dazzling feat of storytelling, There Are Rivers in the Sky entwines these outsiders with a single drop of water, a drop which remanifests across the centuries. Both a source of life and harbinger of death, rivers--the Tigris and the Thames--transcend history, transcend fate: "Water remembers. It is humans who forget."
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Community Reviews
“Welcome to the water tribe…We are the tribe that remembers.” In Elif Shafak’s latest masterpiece “Three atoms join to form water: H-O-H. Three characters connect across borders of time and place, and together they make this story…” Like the vividly drawn characters, “Rivers have personalities. Some calm down with age, winding ponderously across fertile plains and meadows; others become bitter, surging with rage, tumbling through steep gorges; while yet others remain agitated and confused till the end. No two rivers are alike.”
“Whether turbid or placid, in this land where the stones are ancient and the stories are spoken but rarely written down, it is the rivers that govern the days of our lives. Many kingdoms have come and many kings have gone, and God knows most were ruthless but…never forget the only true ruler is water.”
“Two mighty streams flow through every human being: the good and the bad. Which course we choose to follow–through heart, spirit and mind–ultimately determines who we are.” “Everyone in this world has some bent or inclination which, if fostered by favourable circumstances, will colour the rest of his life…everyone has a gift. Given a chance and a modicum of support, anyone can elevate their skill. In the end, perhaps what separates one individual from another is not talent but passion. And what is passion if not a restlessness of the heart, an intense yearning to surpass your limits, like a river overflowing its banks?”
“How do we find our passions?...Most of the time it’s pure coincidence–a book we encounter in the library, a teacher who leaves an impression, a film we can’t forget…places to retreat.” Elif Shafak’s There Are Rivers in the Sky is to me: “an enigma too vast to comprehend, something far more important than my own little life, and yet, at some level. Also deeply personal…my sanctuary…a place so unlike my own reality that I could go there and rewire my brain. I could find refuge in that story land between two rivers–except it was real and it was amazing. Broken and bruised and beautiful and sad and yet surprisingly resilient and profoundly inspiring…that’s what it means to me.”
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