Elif Shafak is an absolute magician. This book was so intricate, interesting, and well-researched. I loved the little clues in each character's story that linked them to other characters and story lines. Most were inconsequential to the overall plot, but the little symbols were there for the attentive reader. Each of the three (well...four if you count the opening chapter in Nineveh) characters' stories could almost stand alone, but yet they were all tied together. Symbolism of and working with water abounds -- rivers, droplets, water dowsers, water scientists, potable water, mudlarks, and more. You know it's a good novel when you find yourself googling background information -- cuneiform, was Arthur Smyth real, lamassu, Nineveh, maps of Mesopotamia,. British museum, Mosul, Yazidis, etc etc. I learned a lot.

Although I loved this book a few things that I wish were different. I wish there was more story line based in ancient Mesopotamia. The opening chapter got me hooked but then there were no more chapters set in that ancient timeline. Maybe that is deliberate -- it's an unknowable time period in many ways, but the civilization keeps popping up in different ways in the modern story lines. The book also just felt long to me. I also don't know what I would cut out? Go into it knowing it will use your full brain and attention. The reward of this special novel is there if you are paying close attention.

I am not the biggest fan of literary fiction but I do appreciate the historical elements that Shafak weaves into her novels. I really liked the characters and their journeys in this novel. The three different POVs were well done and thought out - Arthur was my favorite - but I probably would liked just one singular story about any of the characters. The book has beautifully written sections of it, especially when the grandmother is talking about her ancestors and the stories of her people. These parts felt like I was reading a whole different book. Ultimately though, I have to get through so much fluff and uneventful parts just to get to the last section of the book to really have enjoyed it. It could have easily been a shorter book and gotten to the end much faster.

There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak is an extraordinary literary journey, and I am beyond excited to give it 5 stars. This epic narrative spans different time periods and continents, connecting seemingly disparate lives through the profound symbol of water. With stunning prose and meticulous research, Shafak masterfully weaves together the stories of three characters—Arthur Smith, Zaleekah, and Narin—united by the ancient city of Nineveh and the timeless flow of water. The brilliance of this book lies not just in its intricate storytelling but also in the emotional depth Shafak brings to each character and their journey.

Arthur Smith, modeled on the real-life Assyriologist George Smith, is a standout in the novel. Born in London’s slums, his journey from a publishing house to the exploration of Nineveh’s lost treasures is awe-inspiring. The way his intellectual curiosity transforms into a passionate quest for understanding the ancient world is both gripping and emotionally resonant. His fascination with the lamassus sculptures and cuneiform tablets adds a layer of historical intrigue that deepens the connection between past and present.

Zaleekah, living in more recent times, offers a fresh and deeply personal perspective. Her fascination with water’s life cycle and her eventual move to a houseboat give the narrative a meditative quality. I found her reflections on life, choice, and connection to history compelling. Through her, Shafak introduces a philosophical lens, exploring the cyclical nature of water and memory, and how both shape human history.

Narin, the young Yazidi girl living along the Tigris, adds a layer of urgency to the novel, as her story intertwines with the rise of ISIS and the destruction of ancient landscapes. Shafak’s portrayal of Narin’s journey with her grandmother to be baptized in the sacred Valley of Lalish is deeply moving. It highlights the resilience of Yazidi culture and the devastating impact of modern conflicts on ancient traditions.

Shafak’s ability to bring these three timelines together in a cohesive, emotionally charged narrative is a testament to her storytelling prowess. The history of Nineveh, from its grand libraries to its fiery destruction, is seamlessly interwoven with the characters’ lives. I found myself completely immersed in this vast, multilayered world, moved not only by the characters but by the overarching themes of destruction, memory, and survival.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for providing me with an advance review copy. This book is an absolute masterpiece, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Five stars truly don’t feel like enough to capture the brilliance of There Are Rivers in the Sky.

Elif Shafak’s "There Are Rivers in the Sky" is an extraordinary work of art, effortlessly weaving together multiple timelines and cultures with a lyrical beauty that makes it truly unforgettable. The novel, centered around the Tigris and Thames rivers, explores the fluidity of memory, history, and human connection.

The story spans centuries, linking the lives of Arthur, a poor London boy in 1840, Narin, a Yazidi girl in war-torn Turkey, and Zaleekah, a modern-day hydrologist facing her own existential crisis. Each of these characters is deeply affected by the rivers that define their landscapes, and Shafak masterfully connects their stories through the enduring power of water and the Epic of Gilgamesh. The novel profoundly explores themes of trauma, displacement, and the longing for home. Narin’s struggle to hold onto her heritage in the face of war, and Zaleekah’s journey of rediscovery after personal loss, are deeply moving.

"There Are Rivers in the Sky" is a masterful, meditative exploration of life, loss, and the ties that bind us across time and space. This is an absolute must-read!

Pathed Waters, Dreamed Shores

“Later, when the storm has passed, everyone will talk about the destruction it left behind, though no one, not even the king himself, will remember that it all began with a single raindrop.” So begins “There are Rivers in the Sky.”

Thousands of years ago, on the banks of the Tigris River in Nineveh, the world’s largest and wealthiest city, a single raindrop fell on its king, Ashurbanipal. The raindrop, before dissolving and returning to the sky, bears witness to the king cruelly setting fire to his mentor, a man who has betrayed him.

This drop of water falls, thousands of years later, on a newborn, Arthur, in 1840, on the banks of the Thames. Springing ahead to Turkey in 2014, a young Yazidi girl, Narin, touches a drop of water which was to have been part of her baptism in the Tigris. Finally, in 2018, a hydrologist by the name of Zaleekhah, is moving into a houseboat on the Thames. A tear falls from her eye– water once a snowflake or a wisp of steam. These three characters are all connected by the endless threaded journey of a single drop.

Aquatic memory. “Water remembers. It is humans who forget.”

Arthur’s people christened him King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums. Based on a historical figure, George Smith, Arthur is born into the most adjunct poverty. He has hyperthymesia, an extremely rare condition which allows tremendous amounts of sharply edged details to be recalled. He becomes obsessed with a book, “Nineveh and Its Remains,” and stumbles onto Assyrian tablets in the British Museum, tablets he alone seems able to decipher. His life’s goal focuses on chasing the completion of “a poem.”

A substantial amount of Elif Shafak’s message on water is brought out by Zaleekhah. As a water scientist she gives voice to climate crisis - water crisis issues. Man has sought to control river shapes– burying rivers by boxing them in concrete, covering them with dirt, and building over them. Water has been weaponized, too, throughout history, reshaping the flow of rivers in order to benefit, as well as to devastate.

Young Narin’s passages stress the suffering her people have been subject to throughout history. Dehumanized with labels like “devil worshipers,” it is said the Yazidis have been massacred seventy-two times… from antiquity to ISIS. At one point Arthur is sickened when he hears an official judgment on breaking promises to these infidels, ’‘...the Yazidis are kaffirs. Therefore, you do not need to worry about lying to them. In the eyes of God, it is lawful to snare a heathen; you can deceive them into thinking you mean them no harm and then do with them as you please.’

Sprawling? Absolutely. A lot of ground is covered, a lot of history. This is all tied together with more than just that traveling drop of water. The amount of research required here is staggering, but the characters, the information, and plot twists prevent it from sinking under its own weight. There is so much fascinating world history here, presented in a way rarely uncovered in the classroom.

“And what is passion if not a restlessness of the heart, an intense yearning to surpass your limits, like a river overflowing its banks?”

Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor and to NetGalley for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review. #ThereAreRiversintheSky #NetGalley

I was first introduced to Shafak when I read 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World - a book I LOVED and remains on my “Favorites“ shelf. Though I haven’t read any of her other novels, I was so happy to receive this one in the mail and couldn’t read it fast enough. Though slightly intimidated by the size and scope of the book, I was instantly invested in the story and couldn’t put it down.

It starts with a single drop of water. That drop begins a tale that weaves through three main characters, several different countries, and through centuries of time. Ultimately, we learn about the ancient city of Nineveh and Mesopotamia - believed to be the center of civilization.

Once again, Shafak stuns her readers with lyrical prose; themes of connection and love; and a belief that we must learn from the past to change the future. Even though this book was about 500 pages long, I could have remained with these characters and in this story for much longer.

Reminiscent of The Convent of Water, this one will be a favorite of the year!

A slow but lovely journey that allowed me to become immersed in all the storyline. All the characters touched my heart.

4.5 stars

I loved Elif Shfak's novel 'The Island of Missing Trees', so when I saw the author's new book, 'There Are Rivers in the Sky', I snapped it right up.

This sweeping novel extends over millennia, and by way of a drop of water, takes us from ancient Mesopotamia to modern Europe and back to the Middle East. In the course of the water cycle, H₂O falls as precipitation; lands on people, places and things; drains into waterways; travels far and wide; evaporates; forms clouds; gets buffeted by winds; and eventually falls as precipitation again. Thus, over a period of 2500 years, a water droplet that once nestled in the hair of an ancient Mesopotamian king can land as a snowflake on a British baby; be sipped by a girl in Iraq; fall as a teardrop in England; and so on. This story revolves around three major waterways: the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in the Middle East, and the River Thames in London.

The book opens in the palace of King Ashurbanipal, who rules the vast Mesopotamian Empire - near the Tigris-Euphrates River System - in the 600s BCE. Ashurbanipal is one of the most brutal rulers of the era, known for horrendous cruelty and genocides. Conversely, the king is very interested in the literature and art of Mesopotamia, and he assembles a vast library in the city of Nineveh, many of the contents having been looted from conquered states. Ashurbanipal's favorite literary work is the 'Epic of Gilgamesh', and his most treasured copy of the work is inscribed in cuneiform on a slab of lapis lazuli.

Ashurbanipal's library is destroyed and buried towards the end of his reign, when Nineveh is attacked by the king's enemies. Centuries later, European archaeologists unearth many of the library's contents - tablets, statues, artworks, etc. - and make off with the treasures. The tablets are in pieces, and modern scholars can't read the cuneiform markings, so most Mesopotamian tablets are contained in museum storerooms.

The book now enters the modern and contemporary eras, and the story rotates among three main characters: an English fellow named Arthur Smyth; a Yazidi girl called Narin; and an Iraqi-British hydrologist called Dr. Zaleekhah Clarke. I'll give a nutshell description of each character's role in the story.

➽ Arthur Smyth

In 1840, an impoverished mudlarker (scavenger) gives birth to a baby on the riverbank of London's River Thames. The woman's mudlarking companions name the mite 'King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums', which perfectly describes little Arthur Smyth's life. Young Arthur grows up in a cold dirty crowded London flat; wears rags; is hungry all the time; and is mistreated by his lazy good-for-nothing father, who drinks away any pennies Arthur's mother manages to collect.

Arthur is no ordinary boy though. Arthur Smyth is gifted with an extraordinary memory - visual, verbal, and sensory. Arthur remembers every moment of his life - and everything he sees, reads, hears, experiences, etc. - from the second he was born. When Arthur is an adolescent, his unique gift gets him hired by London's Bradbury and Evans Publishers, where Arthur learns the business from the bottom up.....and even gets to meet Charles Dickens. A visit to the British Museum exposes Arthur to tablets from Nineveh, and - using his exceptional abilities - Arthur teaches himself to decipher the cuneiform inscriptions.

Employed by the British Museum, Arthur comes upon fragments of the 'Epic of Gilgamesh', and becomes obsessed with the poem. The museum is missing some pieces of the saga, however, and - after much time and preparation - Arthur travels to Nineveh to dig up the lost bits. In Nineveh, Arthur meets a Yazidi community, which has a profound effect on his life.

➽ Narin

In 2014, nine-year-old Narin is a Yazidi girl living with her grandmother in the Turkish hamlet of Hasankeyf, near the Tigris River. Hasankeyf will soon be flooded by a new dam, and the residents will be displaced from their homes. This is just one more challenge in the lives of the Yazidis, who are erroneously called 'devil-worshippers', and who have been persecuted, enslaved, murdered, raped, and so on from time immemorial.

To honor their spiritual beliefs, Grandma wants Narin to be baptized in her ancestral home, the Valley of Lalish in Iraq. Shortly before the flooding of Hasankeyf, Grandma and Narin travel to Iraq. Unfortunately, this is a time when members of ISIS are roaming the country, murdering Yazidis and abducting young Yazidi girls to sell.

Author Elif Shafak doesn't skimp on describing the genocide of the Yazidis, and the scenes are stomach-churning and appalling. (It makes one really skeptical about humanity, that's for sure.)

➽ Dr. Zaleekhah Clarke

Zaleekhah Clarke lost her parents in a flash flood in Turkey when she was seven-years-old. Zaleekhah's wealthy Uncle Malek, who had emigrated to England, came to Turkey to fetch the girl. So Zaleekhah grew up in a luxurious London home with Uncle Malek, Aunt Malek, and their daughter Helen, who was like a sister to Zaleekhah.

It's now 2018, and 31-year-old Zaleekhah is a hydrologist and college professor. Zaleekhah's mentor, Professor Berenberg - an eminent hydrologist, biochemist, and climate scientist - had a hypothesis he called 'aquatic memory'. "Berenberg argued that, under certain circumstances, water - the universal solvent - retained evidence, or 'memory', of the solute particles that had dissolved in it, no matter how many times it was diluted or purified.....Water, in other words, remembered." Berenberg thought that if he could prove that water possessed some kind of memory, this would have groundbreaking implications for hydrology, biology, medicine, homeopathy, and various methods of healing. Sadly, when Berenberg published his findings, he was lambasted by other researchers and his reputation was tarnished.

Zaleekhah is now writing a paper on aquatic memory, and though she once feared being ridiculed like Berenberg, Zaleekhah no longer cares. Zaleekhah is depressed, getting divorced, moving into a houseboat on the River Thames, and thinking about suicide. Nevertheless, Zaleekhah feels guilty about killing herself because her cousin Helen has a very sick daughter who requires a kidney transplant, and Helen needs Zaleekhah's support.

As it happens, Zaleekhah is renting the houseboat from a female tattoo artist called Nen, who's very knowledgeable about ancient Mesopotamia. Nen specializes in cuneiform tattoos, and bakes biscuits with cuneiform symbols. The women find they have a lot in common and become friendly.

At the book's climax, all these story lines - Arthur Smyth, Narin, and Zaleekhah Clarke - come together in a very inventive way.

I enjoyed the book, and learned a good deal about rivers. It's sad that people throughout history have made rivers into garbage dumps, using waterways to dispose of human waste, dead bodies, industrial effluents, and every kind of pollutant. This leads to terrible smells, dead fish, disease-causing microbes, and ecological disasters.

I didn't know that some major rivers, like the Bièvre in France, have been covered over. Zaleekhah observes, "It was an important waterway until the nineteenth century, when it became heavily polluted. They covered it over and basically forgot about it. The tourists who walk around Paris today admire the Seine, but they don't realize there's another river flowing beneath their feet." And there are other 'lost rivers' - rivers that have been covered over - in New York, London, Vienna, São Paulo, Sydney, Beijing, Moscow, Toronto, Tokyo, Athens, and elsewhere. Who knew, right??

This is a very good novel with a triplet of fascinating stories. Highly recommended.

Thanks to Netgalley, Elif Shafak, and Knopf for a copy of the book.

It has never happened that 125 pages in, I wanted to write down my thoughts and reviews on the book. This book is phenomenal! It is so brilliant that I rushed to my pre-loved book store to get two of her books available—10 minutes and 38 minutes and The Island of Missing Trees. Her writing gripped me from the first paragraph. She is genuinely a poetess without making it too flowery. The characters she weaves, the history, and the traveling from 600 BC to 2018 are magical. The author's writing is genuinely brilliant and captivating.

This book is meant to be savored, offering a slow yet beautiful reading experience. But I had to share my raw emotions as I continued to revel in Elif Shafak's writing.

I wholeheartedly give it a resounding five stars.

I'm grateful to NetGalley, Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for the opportunity to review this outstanding piece of literature.

Threading three storylines together, this book takes a little time to develop, but richly rewards the reader that sticks with it. With one storyline far in the past and two quite recent, we see the lives of three characters as shaped by many forces, including the epic of Gilgamesh and 2 mighty rivers: the Tigris and the Thames. The relation of the storylines to each other is revealed by the end in a very satisfying way. Shafak uses water to show how closely we are all connected to one another in a way that’s really beautiful. I thought this book was fantastic and wonder how it’s possible that Shafak just keeps getting better and better.

Where to even start!? I loved this book so incredibly much that I’m almost at a loss for words. I truly wish I could read it for the first time all over again. Elif Shafak is a beautiful writer, and she could not have created a more compelling story. This story was a simply a masterpiece, and I cannot recommend it enough! Please do yourself a favor and read this!!

Thank you @netgalley and Knopf for this advanced readers copy!

This was a very interesting book.I'd like how to start it in old times then went to the eighteen hundreds To present times. It starts out in Ancient Times with king who resided in the middle east. He was a very powerful king.And he liked to Read on tablets. And it always started with the drop of water. Things went crazy and then the story jumped to eighteen forties in london when arthur was born on the T h a n e s River. He had a hard life but he made something himself. Loved the Middle East with the British Museum. Bring artifacts back. From.
The middle east. He Add a drop of water on him when he was born. We follow author through the times. Then J a n p s 22 thousand fourteen. N a r I n was a girl who grew up in turkey but her family was from the middle east. Her grandmother had stories about this From the past. Things do not go well for this family. They went back. T o homeland which was in iraq. Things Do not go well in there.They had a terrible M ASS AC. R.. They explain how they How to move in?The old days too because of the same problem. Then it jumped back to.
Arthur going there for the first time the cousin of the Blue tablet which he deciphered. He was a hero.
Because of this. Then JANP2 2018 with this woman names Z.A.L e k h a n. She was studying water and was going through a divorce. Her uncle loved the Middle East.He was from there. There was a book. Called NI NE CE HRE M.A t a s.. The book really fascinated when they talked about these different rivers being covered up. You're talking about a drop of water and how you're tired everything together in this book.

One of the most beautifully written books I have read this year, There Are Rivers in the Sky uses the imagery of water to weave together the stories of an apprentice at a printing press in Victorian London, a young Yazidi girl living by the River Tigris in 2014 and a hydrologist newly separated from her husband and living in a houseboat on the Thames in 2018.

We start off in the ancient Mesopotamian city of Nineveh during the reign of Ashurbanipal, known as an erudite ruler and curator of an extensive library. His most prized possession? A section from one of the oldest poems in the world, the Epic of Gilgamesh.

This poem and the imagery of water connects the three timelines so they collectively tell a larger story about the interconnectivity of life and its circular nature.
I adored all the references to rivers and bodies of water, especially the sections that discussed the hidden rivers that still flow beneath many major cities in the world. It’s a beautiful metaphor of how what once brought life and substance can be pushed aside and hidden and yet can never truly be forgotten. How a single drop of rain can change its form and shape but never truly disappears.

Although I connected with all three characters, Arthur’s story especially pulled at my heart. Following his journey from being born at the muddy edge of a foul river to overcoming poverty, abuse and neglect, he never loses his innate curiosity about the world and his love of reading and learning. He’s awkward and unsociable, but his excitement for discovering ancient languages and yearning for travel and discovery made me adore him as a character.

Be warned though. There are many highly intense scenes and descriptions of torture, abuse, and genocide. It was an extremely emotion read for me, leaving me repeatedly putting the book down to calm down. But the author brings light an atrocity that I’m sure many people have not heard about, or if they have, it’s not discussed nearly enough. I’m so glad I read this book, even though it’s been my most emotional read of the year.

If you enjoy beautifully written prose, interconnected timelines, and love stories that focus on themes of rising above adversity, generational memory, and who controls the past, I highly recommend reading There Are Rivers in the Sky.

*Thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage and Anchor, and to NetGalley for the digital arc. All opinions are my own.

Thanks, @aaknopf, for the review copy via NetGalley and @PRHAudio for the #gifted audiobook. #PRHAudioPartner #sponsored (Available now)

This epic tale (464 pages that felt like 664) follows a single drop of water as it falls, evaporates, and transforms repeatedly and how it interacts with people across centuries. “Water is the consummate immigrant, trapped in transit, never able to settle.”

Though the story begins in the ancient city of Nineveh, the rest focuses on three characters: Arthur (mid-1800s), a child who remembers everything down to a snowflake that landed on his face immediately following his birth; Narin (2014), a Yazidi girl learning about her grandmother’s history under the looming threat of ISIS; and Zaleekah (2018), a recently divorced and suicidal hydrologist.

I’m grateful for the audiobook (Olivia Vinall’s narration was lyrical and lovely) and that @rachellelovesbooks wanted to buddy-read this because I needed the motivation and discussion. I thought the research was impressive (I enjoyed the backstory in the author’s note) and the writing exceptional, especially how the author wove her themes deliberately through the text.

Ultimately, I agree with Rachelle: this was a book I appreciated rather than enjoyed.

Historical novels come in different shapes and sizes. By definition, all of them cover at least one prior century or decade; many portray past and present side by side. I can’t remember any other book, though, that stretches from ancient Nineveh to London in 2018, with stops in Victorian England and the post-Arab-Spring Middle East along the way. Yet Elif Shafak pulls off such a feat, intertwining the lives of her three main characters—Arthur (1840s–1870s), Narin (2014), and Zaleekhah (2018)—with aplomb.

What ties these disparate times and people together is the metaphor of water: water in the sense of the “Epic of Gilgamesh” (essential to the Nineveh portion and the world’s oldest description of a mighty flood, which morphed over time into Noah and his Ark), but also water in the depiction of the characters. Arthur is the oxygen atom, the center. Narin is the left hydrogen atom and Zaleekhah the right, and as in the water molecule itself, the two women bend together over the course of the story while retaining their loose connection to the oxygen that binds them. Water also exists in the ancient cuneiform for that substance, which again appears in different contexts as the novel unfolds.

In a “New York Times” book review that appeared in print this past week, the reviewer expressed his preference for Arthur’s story, a tale of a poor boy dragging himself out of the slums by his proverbial bootstraps and attracting popular acclaim for his scholarly investigation of Nineveh and its celebrated epic. It’s true: Arthur’s story is compelling, with strong action, an appealingly flawed hero, and rich description. But the two women, although quieter and more introspective, illuminate a deeper motif of “There Are Rivers in the Sky”: the ongoing mistreatment of women and girls.

Evidence of this theme appears early, with the patriarchal shift of writing from the goddess Nisaba to the god Nabu. It is expressed most strongly by Narin, a Yazidi girl whose people have often been misunderstood and at times massacred. Their largely unknown culture is lovingly explored here in a series of discussions between granddaughter and grandmother that end with ISIS’s vicious attack on the Yazidi in 2014. Zaleekhah bridges the gap: more economically privileged than Arthur and more culturally privileged than Narin, Zaleekhah nonetheless struggles to come to terms with her own history. She is also a hydrologist, professionally driven to track human-made natural disasters on our rivers and waterways.

“Water,” Elif Shafak declares, “has memory.” A single raindrop, perpetually ascending to the clouds and descending as rain or snow, ties her disparate threads together and, in doing so, reminds us that water gives life but can also destroy it. As this engrossing tale illustrates so beautifully, water deserves our respect and—in terms of our own self-interest, if nothing else—our support.

I plan to interview this author for the New Books Network (link below) in February 2025.

Elif Shafak is a born storyteller and this is further evidence. A drop of water travels from ancient Mesopotamia to 1840 London to 2014 Turkey to 2018 London. Reborn and endlessly recycled as it witnesses important moments in the lives of the characters that make up this ambitious multi-layered narrative that at times falters but at others soars and sparkles. This is a story of rivers and memories and the world's oldest epic poem, and how "Water remembers. It is humans who forget".

There are Rivers in the Sky follows a single drop of water thousands of years from King Ashurbanipal of Mesopotamia to a young man living in poverty in London in the 1840s who develops an interest in Ninevah to a young Yazidi girl in 2014 living along the Tigris to a hydrologist living in a riverboat on the Thames in 2018. The interwoven story is epic and beautiful, the details not becoming fully evident until the last page.

Connected narratives like There are Rivers in the Sky are one of my favorite kinds of stories, and connecting the characters through water was unique. Three of the four storylines were heartbreaking. I learned so much about Ninevah, Gilgamesh, Yazidi culture and genocide, theft of cultural artifacts by Britain and other countries, and re-routing of water in Mesopotamia.

Shafak's writing could have been more subtle. There was factual information inserted throughout the story; while the information was necessary for the story, it sometimes felt like it was forced into the narrative, reading as pushy or preachy. Further, I used the dictionary on my Kindle often; Shafak's word choice was unique and specific, again sometimes feeling unnatural.

I'd recommend There are Rivers in the Sky to readers who are looking for a complex and detailed narrative that also teaches.

There are Rivers in the Sky is an important, beautifully told, epic tale of a small subset of Middle Eastern history (Nineveh, and the Yazidi people), starting in Mesopotamian times, and moving forward to near modern day. The story fluctuates between: a woman with Mesopotamian roots, in London in 2018; a Yazidi grandmother and granddaughter stuck in what becomes an ethnic cleansing of Yazidis by the Islamic State in 2014; and a young British man in the 1870s, who is moved to obsession by histories of Nineveh, cuneiform, and the Epic of Gilgamesh.

All of these parties have special, magical traits. They are all, also, singularly moved by water, as a concept of life united beyond time or, truly, any divide. Yet they all live among stories of division - brutal poverty, religious discrimination, and more.

The reader is first guided through the special historical roots of Nineveh and the river Tigris, an area of biblical roots and early civilization. We are then brought to an understanding of the distinctions between subsequent belief systems, and the manners in which various historical groups attempt to assert their righteousness over others. Gilgamesh becomes relevant in its portrayal of the relationship between beauty and brutality, as the beginning of modern world.

Anyone with a literary background, or who is interested in, or a fan of the Epic of Gilgamesh, will find this fascinating. Beyond that, it offered me a history I did not previously know, all under an umbrella of magical unity of all.

One recurring totem is the Mesopotamian Forgotten Goddess (of storytellers):

“Nisaba is born of the union of heaven and earth, realms that seem so different and distant that it may not be clear what they have in common, and thus her gift – the art of writing – will always represent desire to a efface dualities, dissolve, hierarchies, and transcend boundaries.”

In Shafak’s book, water also serves this purpose, both literally by creating the clay that becomes written tablets, and metaphorically, in the forever reincarnated droplets of our existence.

Thank you, Knopf, and Net Galley, for this beautiful Arc.

I love how a book can transport you to another place and time, with details so vivid and alive, it feels like you are truly there. From ancient Mesopotamia on the River Tigris to modern day London on the River Thames, various characters with stories that build upon and intertwine with each other show just how connected we all are, and how small the world truly is.
Told from various points of view, the characters’ unknowing relationship with each other and their relationship with the earth and its water was especially interesting. Shafak’’s story is Intelligently and lyrically written and reminds me somewhat of Picoult ‘s style, which further drew me in. This is not the last I’ll be reading from this author.

Where to start?!

I loved this book so much more than I could have imagined. After The Island of Missing Trees I didn’t think I could live another book more. I wish I could give this one more than 5 stars.

Elif Shafak is a beautiful writer and perfectly captures the personal tales of peoples lives and how they intertwine.i loved it!

Thank you Netgalley for the early copy.