There Are Rivers in the Sky weaves together three stories set in three timelines, featuring disparate characters, to explore interconnectedness, the power of water, echoing tragedies, and the timelessness of the written word.
Water remembers. It is humans who forget.
In 1840 in London, young Arthur lives near the sewage-filled River Thames, desperate to escape poverty and his abusive household.
In 2014 Turkey, ten-year-old Narin is living near the Tigris and is affected by a disorder that will cause her to go permanently deaf.
And in 2018 London, Zaleekah, a hydrologist, moves into a houseboat on the Thames when she and her husband break up, but she can't shake her thoughts of suicide.
There Are Rivers in the Sky traces the stories of these three disparate characters living alongside rivers in three different times, interconnected by a single drop of water and "the Epic of Gilgamesh," an ancient poem that may have the power to change each of their lives.
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.
Shafak uses the life-giving--and at times, through flood or pollution, life-taking--waters of the Tigris and the Thames to help shape this story in three timelines.
Through Zaleekah's 2018-set story we explore climate change, pollution, and the consequences of abusing natural resources, as well as the questionable morality of private or museum ownership of other cultures' precious artifacts. Yet the river is a backdrop to her reimagined future, her newfound inner strength and search for love, and her renewed hope in life.
Narin's story, aside from modern modes of travel and communication, feels like a tragedy pulled from deep in the past--and, in fact, it is said that the Yazidi people have been endlessly beaten down and massacred over and over again since ancient times. In a shockingly speedy escalation of force, Isis brings centuries-old hatred to trap and murder innocent Yazidis, eradicating communities in relentless genocide.
And clever Arthur slowly pulls himself out of a London slum by lucking into an apprenticeship at a printing shop with nurturing mentors. His curiosity about antiquities leads him to the British Museum and, eventually, a key role in deciphering tablets, then a formative trip to the Middle East and Nineveh, which will be the source of his one true love and also his undoing.
Shafak makes what could have been an unwieldy or disjointed-feeling set of complex situations into a tragically beautiful intertwined novel that shines a light on weighty issues at three points in space and time. I was haunted by this and fascinated as well.
I received a prepublication edition of There Are Rivers in the Sky courtesy of Knopf and NetGalley.

I'd love to hear your bossy thoughts about this book.
Elif Shafak also wrote the lovely The Island of Missing Trees.
Shafak is a British-Turkish author of seventeen books, including eleven novels.
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