There Are Rivers In The Sky by Elif Shafak

Book Review

Continuing my exploration of the stories of ancient Mesopotamia I again stumbled across this one in the local library when I was looking for information on cuneiform tablets and the epic of Gilgamesh. And this is a belter of a book!

Here’s the blurb:

This is the story of one lost poem, two great rivers, and three remarkable lives – all connected by a single drop of water.

In the ruins of Nineveh, that ancient city of Mesopotamia, there lies hidden in the sand fragments of a long-forgotten poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh.

In Victorian London, an extraordinary child is born at the edge of the dirt-black Thames. Arthur’s only chance of escaping poverty is his brilliant memory. When his gift earns him a spot as an apprentice at a printing press, Arthur’s world opens up far beyond the slums, with one book soon sending him across the seas: Nineveh and Its Remains.

In 2014 Turkey, Narin, a Yazidi girl living by the River Tigris, waits to be baptised with water brought from the holy sit of Lalish in Iraq. The ceremony is cruelly interrupted, and soon Narin and her grandmother must journey across war-torn lands in the hope of reaching the sacred valley of their people.

In 2018 London, broken-hearted Zaleekhah, a hydrologist, moves to a houseboat on the Thames to escape the wreckage of her marriage. Zaleekhah foresees a life drained of all love and meaning – until an unexpected connection to her homeland changes everything.

A dazzling feat of storytelling from one of the greatest writers of our time, Elif Shafak’s There are Rivers in the Sky is a rich, sweeping novel that spans centuries, continents and cultures, entwined by rivers, rains, and waterdrops:

‘Water remembers. It is humans who forget.’

In my humble opinion, this book was an absolutely masterful piece of storytelling. Through almost 500 pages of brilliance, Shafak seeks to weave together the stories of four people, spanning 3000 years with one drop of water.

The water droplet is the observer and the premise is that water has memory and has witnessed all these stories. It’s told with the omnipotent voice not in the first person voice of the water itself as this, I feel, would become not only limiting but gimmicky and Shafak is not that.

She takes the story of the ancient Mesopotamian library of Ashurbanipal’s and takes us on a journey from the Tigris and Euphrates to the Thames in Victorian Britain and beyond. Ashurbanipal is the first character we encounter. The second is Arthur of the slums and sewers, a boy born into poverty who rises through society due to his extraordinary abilities. His story is based in that of George Smith, the first man to translate the cuneiform tablets stored in the British Museum. The third story encompasses, modern Turkey in 2014, the Iraq conflict and the persecution of the Yazidi people by the Islamic State and follows a girl named Narin. The fourth story is that of Zaleekhah, a hydrologist who has hit rock bottom in her life, emotionally, and finds herself living on a house boat in London, 2018.

The narrative is at times harrowing with violent kings, genocide and personal struggles all covered with equal weight, care, research and attention to detail, to ensure each story is told in an authentic and sensitive way. The way the stories link up is a masterful twist of fate and the tears that link them all together one of which is (spoiler alert) the water droplet that fell from the sky 3000 years ago, is poignant in a way that words cannot convey.

The rivers are an observers, always present. The characters live beside it, have their lives turned upside down by it, even live on it, but none attempt to control it. Instead they all have a spiritual connection with it in some shape or form. During Arthur’s story water even plays a part in the printing process, reminding us that it’s still there, all the time. The ever preset cholera reminds us and the characters within the story how very vital a clean water source is.

This is a story with a political message, an environmental message and a social message. It’s a call to arms, a gentle tap on the shoulder and a slap in the face, showing us the reality of the world we have created. Water will always be here, even if we build over it, dam it, pollute it, it will persist long after we have. For me, this is a must read on so many levels and has given me plenty of food for thought. The only question for me is, what do I do with this message? For the moment? Share it.

You can buy ‘There Are Rivers In The Sky’ in all good bookshops. If you would like to buy a copy online, please consider visiting my page on Bookshop.org where I have gathered some of the books I read and recommend. Here you will find a plethora of myth, legend and folktale.

And don’t forget to support your local library too. See if they have a copy to borrow.