Home There are Rivers in the Sky

There are Rivers in the Sky

Elif Shafak

Viking 2024 | 496 pages
E25-14

This book is a challenging literary read, but well worth the effort. It is beautifully, almost poetically written, with great storytelling and com-pelling characters. Elif Safak grew up in Turkey and lives in London. She often writes about feminist and multicultural issues. Near to the end of the book, she wrote, “there is no better space than literature, especially the novel... within which to freely explore the most complex issues of our time with nuance, depth, care and empathy". 'There are Rivers in the Sky' contains multiple interconnected stories, spanning several centuries. A forgotten poem, the 'Epic of Gilgamesh', is hidden in ancient Mesopotamia, while a child living in stark poverty alongside the Thames in Victorian London grows up to become a fa-mous archaeologist. In 2014, a girl is waiting to be baptised in the River Tigris in Turkey, while in 2018 a hydrologist is living on a houseboat on the Thames. Their stories are linked, with the book weaving together personal, historical and cultural motifs, with rivers and water forming a common theme connecting everything together.

References in the press

The reviews of There are rivers in the sky are overwhelmingly positive. Hans Bouman in de Volkskrant describes it as a powerful lament about the destruction of nature and culture through the centuries, and as an ode to storytelling. The Bookish Elf describes the story as mesmerising and as sweeping the reader along by the currents of its prose. According to The Spectator, ‘This waterborne tale, crossing cultures, centuries and continents, is a magnificent achievement.’ Kirkus Reviews’ assessment was generally positive, describing the story as engaging, but thought that the motif of the raindrop connecting the various stories was ‘precious’ and that the writing style was convoluted. The Spectator also viewed the symbolic use of water as overextended.

William Dalrymple and Elif Shafak There Are Rivers in the Sky | Elif Shafak in conversation with William Dalrymple (JLF London)

Recommendations

Elif Sharak has a Substack column in which she writes about literature and writing.
Other novels exploring the intersection of history, memory and identity include Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.
The Epic of Gilgamesh can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg, including an (old) analysis of it, while its Wikipedia page lists several modern translations in Dutch and English.