Elif Shafak is an award-winning British Turkish novelist whose writings have been translated into 56 languages. She is the author of nineteen books, twelve of which are novels, and is a bestselling author in various countries across the world. There Are Rivers In The Sky is her latest piece of work. The story of the book is that of one lost poem, two great rivers the Tigris and the Thames, and three extraordinary lives – all of which are interlinked by water. An ancient city in Mesopotamia, the ruins of Nineveh, hidden in the middle of sand pieces is a long-lost poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh.
In Victorian London, an amazing child is born at the brink of the dirty River Thames. Arthur’s brilliant memory is his only chance of escaping poverty. This gift leads him to become an apprentice at a printing press, and Arthur’s world begins, now beyond the slums with one book, namely Nineveh and Its Remains, leading him to travel across the oceans. Arthur goes on to great success as he works for the British Museum, and deciphers poems written on tablets discovered in Nineveh. He falls in love with a Yazidi girl while visiting the Orient, and for what happens there and how it complicates his life and his deep feelings, the book is a must-read. He is known as “King Arthur of the Sewers and the Slums” by all, and Elif writes: “And that is how the boy born on a secluded stretch of the Chelsea waterfront, under the low-lying branches of a bankside oak tree, will someday be known to all. A child of the river he is, and so he will remain all his life.”
Elif Shafak describes rivers so well as follows that one is left spell bound: “Rivers are fluid bridges – channels of communication between separate worlds. They link one bank to the other, the past to the future, the spring to the delta, earthlings to celestial beings, the visible to the invisible, and ultimately, the living to the dead"
In 2014, in Turkey, Narin, a Yazidi girl living by the river Tigris, waits to be baptised in Iraq with water brought from the holy Lalish. The ritual is brutally disturbed and soon Narin and her grandmother journey across war-torn lands hoping to reach the sacred valley of Yazidis. Narin’s ancestor is the one that Arthur had fallen in love with, she was a seer. Their family is a generation of healers. Narin’s grandmother gives out pearls of wisdom throughout the book, through which I for one learnt a great deal, two of them are as follows:
“Prayer is not about asking for things. It is a conversation. When God is less lonely, we are less lonely.”
“In the blackest sky, there is a star glimmering, high above, in the deepest night, a candle burning bright. Never despair. You must always look for the nearest source of life.”
In 2018, in London, heart-broken Zaleekhah, a hydrologist, moves to into a houseboat on the Thames. This is to escape the debris of her collapsing marriage. Her husband has filed for divorce and her rather old-fashioned uncle (who has served as a father figure since her parents’ death in a tragic accident) thinks that she can save her marriage and that it is only a mid-life crisis. She foresees a life sapped of all love, meaning and purpose, until a surprising connection to her homeland changes her life. She also meets Nen, who owns a tattoo shop and is very unconventional in her thinking and it changes Zaleekhah’s world view. Nen teaches Zaleekhah that too much gratitude swallows love, and one needs to keep an eye on how much gratitude one feels towards the people we love unless it engulfs us, in regards her relationship with her uncle. I feel that Nen helps Zaleekhah evolve as a person, and Elif has really gone into depth when building her characters especially Nen’s to give the reader an idea as to how she helps out.
Elif describes rivers so well as follows that one is left spell bound: “Rivers are fluid bridges – channels of communication between separate worlds. They link one bank to the other, the past to the future, the spring to the delta, earthlings to celestial beings, the visible to the invisible, and ultimately, the living to the dead. They carry the spirits of the departed into the netherworld, and occasionally bring them back. In the sweeping currents and tidal pools shelter the secrets of foregone ages. The ripples on the surface of water are the scars of a river. There are wounds in its shadowy depths that even time cannot heal.”
The novel is a great achievement in writing as it spans centuries, continents and cultures and tells us about water, rivers and rain. As Elif writes: “Water remembers. It is humans who forget.” Elif has written detailed characters which are thoroughly believable. She gives stunning descriptions of laboratories, water, countries, streets in London, and everything she describes has meaning and layers. There Are Rivers In The Sky is a modern day classic that I would recommend for all to read to increase their knowledge base.