There Are Rivers in the Sky
A novel
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4.4 • 33 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
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.”
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Water is the basis of life, and water provides the link between three disparate stories in this novel from acclaimed author Elif Shafak. In 19th-century London, Arthur is a smart but abused child who finds brief joy in reading and supports his family however he can, including foraging in the dangerously polluted River Thames. In 2014, Narin is a 10-year-old girl losing her hearing. Her mother wants to baptize her in sacred Iraqi waters, but sectarian violence may make that impossible. And in 2018, Zaleekah is a scientist who, disappointed in life and love, is giving herself one month to put her affairs in order. While the interwoven tales each have a style of their own, Shafak brings compelling commonalities to each one, and infuses their tragic circumstances with deep compassion. There Are Rivers in the Sky is as intelligent as it is caring and wise.
Customer Reviews
An ode to the human spirit
This is the most remarkable novel I have ever read. It is profound and beautifully written.