There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak is an excellent historical fiction story.
The author's voice and writing style is so wonderful, I just couldn’t put this down, a truly powerful read.
I really enjoyed reading it and felt immersed into the book which I really like being able to picture the book in my head and I found it easy to do with this book.

Thank You NetGalley and Knopf for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

“Water remembers. It is humans who forget.”

The earth is a closed system, therefore the total of premoridal waters that have ever existed, still exist in one form or another. Life in its most basic form is transformed in an everlasting cycle of life, death and renewal. Elif Shafak takes this tenant and weaves a beautiful and enchanting epic, There Are Rivers in the Sky.

The tale begins with a single droplet of water landing on the head of the ruthless, but erudite King Ashurbanipal of Mesopotamia in the ancient city of Nineveh. Ashurbanipal is remembered for his legendary library which fell into ruins with the demise of his reign. Out of its ashes emerge the blue fragments on which the Epic of Gilgamesh has been preserved. In parallel fashion, we piece together the story of three characters, their connection to two ancient bodies of water, traversing centuries, and cultures, all bound to a little blue tablet. In 1840, King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums, an archeologist, born on the banks of the Thames, gifted with an uncanny ability to decode ancient texts. In 2014, Narin is a Yazidi girl who comes from a line of water-dowsers. Born with a rare disorder that will leave her deaf, her grandmother seeks to have her baptized in the holy Valley of Lalish where they discover that Isis is systematically eradicating their people. The melancholic, Zaleekhah lives in on a houseboat in modern day London, and is a hydrologist studying a unique property of water.

Sure to become a modern classic, There Are Rivers in the Sky blends the story within a story Oriental structure, with Dickensian sensibilities and characters, and modern eco-political concerns. Suffice it to know that you will care deeply about the fate of these characters, relish the lyrical writing and have a new appreciation for the life giving element that is water.

TW: mental health issues, suicide, suicidal thoughts, sexual assault, murder, genocide

Many thanks to the author @SafakElif, @AAKnopf and @NetGalley for the pleasure of reading this digital advanced copy in exchange for an honest review..

What a different read for me. This book is about three different lives:

Timeline 1840 in London, Arthur is born into a very dysfunctional family. He changes his life to free himself from living poor.

Timeline 2014 in Turkey, Narin a young girl with a hearing disorder, traveling with her grandmother for religious reasons seem to be running against time.

Timeline 2018 in London, Zaleekah is planning to take her own life.

These lives and a drop of water all intertwine.

The description and attention to detail by the author is wonderfully done. Would recommend this book to anyone that enjoys an in depth read.

Thank you NetGalley for the advanced digital copy in exchange for my honest review.

I will read anything Elif Shafak writes, forever and ever. I love how all of the stories were connected, the different time periods and places. Shafak is a masterful storyteller.

4.5 Stars rounded up to 5

There Are Rivers in the Sky follows three separate POVs of three characters in different eras and parts of the world yet we are continuously shown how their fates are intertwined and connected. Elif Shafak does an amazing job of storytelling with this one, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

In 1840, King Arthur of the Sewers and the Slums in London along the Thames leads a courageous life filled with passion, bravery, determination, and curiosity. Never letting his destitution get the best of him, he makes a name for himself as first being an apprentice at a leading publisher moving on to being one of the only people in the world who can read and decipher Cuneiform tablets from the ancient city of Nineveh.

In 2014, Narin is a ten-year-old Yazidi girl who is on the brink of losing her hearing forever. Descendants of a lost generation and religion along the Tigris, Narin's grandmother is desperate for Narin to be baptized in the sacred Iraqi temple where she can hear her peoples hymns before her hearing goes. Yet, they are running out of time with the rising presence of ISIS and the destruction of their ancestral lands along the Tigris.

In 2018, Zaleekah, a hydrologist, had planned to take her own life before a curious book about her homeland sparks a curiosity in her she hasn't felt in years, .Nineveh and It's Remains. Raised an orphan by her wealthy uncle, Zaleekah is navigating how to take the reins on her life for the first time.

What an enriching and ambitious tale to immerse yourself in. This book has so much packed into it; however, Elif Shafak is able to seamlessly connect these stories through water without it being overtly poetic. I really enjoyed the writing style and meaning behind every little detail she throws at you, it was so so clever.

The connection Elif is able to make with water is honestly breathtaking and genius. I have never thought of water in this sense but every time she would include a snippet of that very first water drop returning, it just felt right. As their journey's progress you begin to care more and more for these characters and their ending, it was heartbreaking at times to leave off not knowing what comes next (page turner!!).

There was a moment in the middle where I will admit I had to power through as all timelines seemed to be at a stagnate point of their storytelling. There was a lot of background and historical re-tellings in that moment that were very interesting but felt bland next to the other chapters at that time, lending to my half start deduction.

I will be purchasing a copy of this one for my shelf and I can't wait to read The Island of Missing Trees next, although I fear this one set my bar pretttty high!

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the E-Arc in exchange for an honest review.

Courtesy of the Knopf publishing group and Netgalley, I received the ARC of There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak. This amazing novel starts in ancient Mesopotamia, the era of clay tablets and the library of King Ashurbanipal, location of a cuneiform copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Following a drop of water on it's journey towards 2018, from the Tigris to the Thames, as it touches the lives of the three main characters is transformative! I was fascinated to learn about Arthur Smyth, based on a true person, about young Narin and the Yazidi culture, and the modern scientist Zaleekhah and her journey. The language is poetic and the story inspiring...five stars is not enough!

Undoubtedly the best book I have read this year and probably one of the best in my lifetime , There are Rivers in the Sky encompasses everything I love about reading. It is historical fiction at its best, taking place in long gone eras ( pre biblical Mesopotamia as well as Dickensonian England) that peaked my curiosity and intellect. The writing was so beautiful it was breathtaking at times. I learned about faraway places that haven’t been on my recent radar. . There are four distinct stories and the main characters are so well drawn and interesting that each could have been the protagonist of an entire story.

In the dawn of civilized history, King Ashurbanipal of Mesopotamia, strives to achieve immortality through his legacy of written tablets containing the Epic of Gilgamesh, bringing to my mind the epic poem Ozymandias. The Tigris River is threaded throughout his story as is a raindrop falling on his newborn head only to re-emerge in future generations. Water is the sustenance of life.

In 1840, born to poverty, near London’s Thames River, King Arthur of the Sewers and Gutters, as a boy, becomes fascinated by by ancient Mesopotamia and archeological findings of that era, Arthur’s intellect transcends his impoverished beginning. He gives up a successful career in printing to work in a museum where he is able to travel to Mesopotamia searching for the remains of the tablets bearing the missing pieces of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

In 2014, again at the Tigris River, is young Narin, a Yazidi girl , who is losing her ability to hear. Caught in the political horrors of the ISIS slaughter of nonbelievers, Narin becomes a pawn in a religious war., in which the terrorists plunder and steal valuable historic artifacts and commit the genocide of a peace loving religious minority.


The year is 2018. Zaleekah Clarke, escaping a dying marriage, moves to a simple houseboat on the Thames where she develops an interest in tattoos of the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the artist who draws the tattoos.

Thought provoking, intellectually stimulating, with down to earth characters embodying human strengths and frailties , Elif Shafak has crafted an unforgettable tale. The recycling of a drop of water through the ages connects the characters to each other. Human destruction of our ecosystem and the disease ridden pollution of life sustaining element, water is described again and again. I was also left to ponder how damming of rivers causes floods which bury both current towns and historically significant artifacts. Looming as an overriding current issue with roots going back ages, is the genocide and misinformation leading to persecution of Yazidis. So much to think about and research on my own. So much to think about.

Awarding this incredible book five stars seems insufficient. It is a masterpiece. I highly recommend it for discerning readers who enjoy learning and thinking about what they read. It is being published tomorrow, August 20, 2024. It is a must read. Many thanks to NetGalley and Knopf and Penguin publishers for an advance readers copy in exchange for my review.

Historical Fiction • Contemporary • LitFic
Publication Date 20 August 2024

Thank you to @netgalley and @aaknopf for the digital ARC.

I was immediately drawn into Elif Shafak’s beautiful poetic prose and quotable verses. This is a book that brings terrifying historical moments to life in vivid clarity, showing alternatively the fragility of humanity as well as its resilience; highlighting barbaric acts that only humans do to other humans as well as generosity of spirit.

Jon Snow [the physician who studied causes of the transmission of cholera during the 1854 Broadstreet outbreak] and Charles Dickens both get cameos as well as many other historical figureheads.

💧 Told in 3 storylines that converge following the path of a raindrop that falls to the earth and evaporates back to the skies, bringing life as well as death, flowing from the Tigris to the Thames.
✦ Arthur Smith is a boy genius with a photographic memory born in the slums of 1800s London.
✦ In near present day lives Narin, a Turkish Yazidi displaced girl,
✦ and Zaleekah, a water scientist and researcher living in London.

This book is very well researched. It confronts many deeper systemic issues to include cultural appropriation, religious persecution, colonialism, racism, classism, bigotry, and human rights, at every turn.

True to the history of this region, once the cradle of life, now war torn and terror gripped, the book has many bleak points, and I spent much of the latter portions of the book in despair. Definitely worth a read if you like great storytelling and historical fiction that is educational.

I listened to this on audio while tandem reading portions on kindle. Olivia Vinall does a fantastic third person narration — it sounds like she’s telling the story from above, watching amidst the clouds. ⛅️

TW: Child Abuse, Death, Murder, Terrorism, Rape, Genocide

THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY by Elif Shafak is beautifully written -- and through the lives of three characters, a deep and satisfying read. Organized around rivers and a single drop of water, the story ripples and flows with grace around complicated lives and relationships of people whose struggles felt so relatable and immediate, even when they are centuries and thousands of miles from me. I so appreciated learning about history and lives of peoples I'd never heard of, the Yazidis as well as considering the world views and time periods I am not familiar with. A truly exceptional storyteller, I look forward to other stories by Shafak. I received a copy of this book and these opinions are my own, unbiased thoughts.

This felt too long for me and lost me with the characters. it covers so much time and history and with the election, i dont think i was in the right mindset to be able to keep up

Elif Shafak is a beautiful storyteller. The way she takes the lives of three completely different people in three different time periods and weaves their lives together around a common theme - water.
And the way she turns elements or inanimate objects into characters themselves is such a testament to her story writing. She takes a drop of water and it becomes someone.

Each storyline was interesting in its own way. In multiple POVs, usually one is not as exciting as the other but I enjoyed them all equally and didn’t mind when it would shift back and forth.

We get historical fiction involving 1840s London - the poverty, the colonialism and obsession with retrieving ancient artificts, the beauty of the British Museum inspiring children and people to understand places and cultures they never would have while simultaneously harboring stolen objects - the juxtaposition that we still deal with regarding this topic.
We get history of the Yazidis both in the 1800s and during the 2014 genocide.
And we learn much about Mesopotamia, ancient civilizations, the Tigris, the Thames, the Euphrates.

So much of this was depressing, as history often is, especially regarding the Yazidi genocide in 2014. I (shamefully) honestly didn’t know much about it even though it happened only 10 years ago.

It took about 65-70% to really get into the main plots of each story but when it did it quickly wrapped up from there (almost too quickly) and I felt the end came so quickly but also loved how each story intertwined

Shafak is an incredible storyteller. The novel was engaging and full of well defined characters. All three stories were full of heartbreak and struggle but so well written. I can’t believe I’ve never read about the continued persecution of Yazidis. This novel brought some much needed attention to this group of people and their struggles. I loved how Shafak wove all three stories together based on water and how connected we all are because of it. The book was brutal and sad but is written and done so well. This book is well worth the read.

Epic historical fiction weaving together four different story lines spread over centuries. The story begins with King Ashurbanipal, a tyrant ruler with a passion for learning who establishes a grand library in Mesopotamia. From there it traverses centuries to tell the story of Arthur, born in poverty in Dickensian London, Narin, a young Yazidi child descendant from a line of healers and Zaleekha, a hydrologist, struggling in her marriage in present day London. The author expertly brings these stories together in one long enthralling saga. Water is an important element traversing the entire story line as it converts itself from clouds to raindrops to snow to rivers and back again. This is in a way the author's tributes to water whether it be in the form of rivers or otherwise. It also highlights the highly advanced civilizations that were birthed and nurtured in Mesopotamia or rather in that entire Middle-Eastern region and how the West has and continues to undermine them. It's hard to sum up this book without giving away the story. I would say just go in trusting the author and you will be rewarded. One of my favorite recent reads for sure.

Thank You NetGalley, Knopf Publishing Group and Elif Shafak for the ARC.

Extraordinary story about water, place, history, despair and discovery. Honestly, the story captured my thoughts and imagination like none other in quite some time. The common denominator was drops of water, a ancient poem, the Thames and the The Tigris rivers. We see history unfold and be discovered alont these rivers. Their meaning is quite different for each character.

I applaud learning about the culture of this area of Turkey along the Tigris river. I knew little prior to reading this novel and the author gave the reader a interesting lesson. It pained me to read about the Yazidi people and what is happening to them. I do hope their culture survives Isis. Narin, a ten year old Yazidi girl and her grandmother were the most compelling for me.

I thought Arthur's story with his love of patterns, learning and a bit of obsession was interesting and one certainly rooted for him to succeed. The 1860s time period is always an interesting topic.

Zaleeka who is a hydologist in London is trying to find her happiness and along the way enlightens us about water, old rivers and our changing world. I appreciated the one drop of water and how it moves around the world in different times and places. I will be reading more books from this author. I do highly recommend this story. Thank you Netgalley for the chance to review this novel.

There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak🇹🇷
Publication Date: Aug. 20th, 2024

Through a compelling multiple narration, the novel presents three stories set in a different time, but as water from rivers can connect, the main characters' lives are also intertwined. In Victorian England, Arthur is born by the river Thames, he is a poor boy but with an impressive memory and intelligence and with a deep interest in ancient Mesopotamia. In the same river, but in 2018, Zaleekhah, who studies water conservation, moves to a houseboat. Lastly, Narin, a Yazidi girl, travels with her grandmother on their way to the north of Iraq for having her baptism ceremony.

This novel offers a lot. It is beautifully written, captivating, and so rich in history. Water has different roles and meanings, such as life and death, damage, and hope.

There are Rivers in the Sky highlights themes of memory, time, and belonging, and there are so many others that are addressed such as love and migration that lead a lot to think on and it could be an ideal pick for a book club discussion.

It caught my attention since the first lines with its opening about Epic Gilgamesh and the Assyrian King Ashurbanipal. There are some other literary references and I loved it because of all what I have mentioned and also because of how the author addressed serious situations still happening in our times, such as massacres, slavery, and the destruction of natural resources, pointing out how the past still resonate in our present days.
To me, this novel was a reminder of the importance of protecting nature and historical treasures and how necessary it is to learn from the past.

I learned about Yazidis after reading Nadia Murad's memoir, and I learned a bit more about their religion here. They are one of the Mesopotamian minorities and the author brought out the genocide that happened during this century.

I know this novel will stay with me, and now, a raindrop will have a deep meaning.
I read the digital advanced copy thanks to Netgalley and Knopf Publishing Group.
This is one of my best reads o the year, and I highly recommend it.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

4.75 out of 5 stars

At once a love letter to water, a scathing examination of racial, ethnic, orientation, sex, and religious inequality and violence, and an analysis of the gulfs between rich and impoverished, Shafak shows off her storytelling skills by expertly weaving the stories of multiple people spanning centuries and locales.

King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums was born on the banks of the Thames to a mother whose husband would eventually have her committed to an asylum. Arthur, however, seems to have been kissed by the stars, having a memory that holds everything - from the day he was born forward. He works at a printing press, and later, at the British Museum, where he first sees the lamassus, and from that point on, is obsessed with all things Mesopotamian. Eventually, he gets a grant to travel to the Tigris to find missing pieces of The Epic of Gilgamesh.

Narin lives in Türkiye with her father and grandmother. After several failed attempts to baptize the Yazidi girl, the grandmother makes the decision that they will travel to Iraq and baptize Narin the old traditional way...before she goes deaf. Narin's hearing is slowly slipping away, and she will go deaf. But Iraq is not what the grandmother remembers. While the Yazidi have always been ostracized and ridiculed, Yazidi or no, no one seems to be able to escape the psychotic rage of ISIS, and soon the journey to get baptized becomes a quest just to stay alive.

Zaleekah lives in London. She is on the verge of divorce, she is prone to melancholy, and she has felt like an outsider ever since her parents died in a flood. She grew up obsessed with water and found a similarly obsessed mentor who believed that water holds memory. Ridiculed out of the scientific community, he died destitute and alone. But Zaleekah believed him, and when her husband, who is also a scientist like her, find out, he ridicules her, and things escalate. Zaleekah leaves that night.

She ends up renting a boat house on the Thames from Nen, a tattoo artist with internal peace and acceptance of self that Zaleekah both admires and is puzzled by.

I adored this story. These stories. They all come together coherently at the end, and it never felt forced. They were all tied together by sorrow, water, and melancholy. It pays tribute to the history of oral storytelling, and powerful desire for stories from history.

It's been a while since I've read some Elif Shafak and wow, I'd forgotten what a stunning writer she is. She crafts a story in the literal cradle of humanity and leads the reader on a deeply wondrous and spiritual journey through the horrors and wonders that the region, its people and its legacy have suffered, From the narrative resonance of The Epic of Gilgamesh through the history of narratives, to the climate narrative borne of lost rivers and gods -- everything about this is crafted masterfully to simultaneously rouse the history geek, the science geek and the raging feminist in you. The pacing is frequently introspective, yet subtle. There are horrors within, specifically of the genocide and sexual violence against Yazidi people, and yet there is so much wonder at the tenacity of Assyrian civilization and artifacts. Overall, the imagery of a single drop of water's journey is used gorgeously to remind us about truths forgotten, buried and yet connected.

The very first thing in this book is a single drop of water, falling from the skies above the Tigris River onto the head of a king. The very last thing is that same drop, now a snowflake, falling centuries later and half of a world away. In between, we meet a variety of people, all of whom are searching, and all of whom have lives intimately entwined with water. All of them are equally intertwined with stories: stories of antiquity, stories of love and loss, and stories about the stories birthed by water, carried by water, and sometimes hidden and waiting to be discovered.

I hesitated before starting this review, unsure whether or not I would be able to adequately describe Elif Shafak’s evocative prose and deep meaning. I’m pretty sure that the layers of this book will reveal themselves to me over time and in subsequent readings, so I ask the author’s forgiveness if I wasn’t able to plumb the depths on one reading.

The prose is beautifully written. From the beginning, it has a sing song quality as if being passed down in oral tradition by a skilled storyteller. And it isn’t just stories that are passed down. Women of the Yazidi people, who are central to this story, have abilities that in some cultures would be called shamanic. Some can dowse for water; others can see into hearts, others have the ability to foretell the future. And of course, the water is also passed down, constantly coming to earth, living on earth, returning to the skies, and then starting the cycle all over again. Nothing disappears, all is related.

This is a sweeping, beautiful epic and I was so fortunate to have the opportunity to read it. Many thanks to the Knopf and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Excellent storytelling! So much ties the plot together, beginning with one drop of rain that lands on the head of King Ashurbanipal in ancient times. His vast kingdom of Mesopotamia is destined to be destroyed, along with his extensive library which includes the Epic of Gilgamesh, predating even the Bible. On the palace grounds are mammoth statues of protective spirits called lamassu, with the head of a human, the body of a bull, and the wings of a bird. These will also find their waynthroughout the story as does the River Tigris.

And the second great river is the Thames in London. On a cold fall day in 1840, a baby boy is born to a poor mudlarker on the banks of the river. The mother's fellow searchers decide to call him Arthur: King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums. The boy is gifted and will remember the taste and feel of a snowflake landing on his lips on the day he was born--the very same drop of water that touched a great king's head millennia before. The boy will grow up to have a fascination for the works of Gilgamesh...and will hunt for the broken pieces left behind when an ancient civilization was destroyed.

And in 2014 by the River Tigris, in an ancient settlement named Hasankeyf, a young girl named Narin hopes to be baptized in the river. She and her people are part of the Yazidi community, who many people despise as devil-worshippers. But the government is building a dam that will flood their homes and they must pack up and move on. What does fate have in store for them as displaced people?

And in 2018, a young hydrologist named Zaleekhah Clarke is moving into a houseboat on the River Thames in Chelsea. She is struggling to start over as her marriage seems to be falling apart. She learns that the woman from whom she has rented the houseboat is a tattoo artist named Nen whose shop is called The Forgotten Goddess and she is fascinated by the words of Gilgamesh as well.

'Why are women left out of history? Why do we have to piece their stories back together from fragments--like broken shards of pottery?' Anyone who has done any genealogical research for their family knows the truth of that. One thing is the name change that used to happen when a woman married and took her husband's, which maybe happens less so in today's society. But I digress...

Excellent story--so many plot threads so well tied together! This is my favorite novel of 2024 so far. Any story that has an appearance from Charles Dickens in it has to be great, right? This time of year I begin planning what books I will give for Christmas gifts, and this one will be on the top of the list.

Many thanks to the author and publisher for providing me with an arc of this new work of literary fiction via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and the opinions expressed are my own.

Three different people in three different time periods are brought together through their connection with the Tigris River. Even though the premise of the story didn't excite me, I'm really glad I read it. Shafak does a masterful job of weaving some really interesting stories together.