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.

DNF at 60%.

Shafak is a favorite author - The Island of Missing Trees remains one of my favorite books and I’ve been reading her backlist this year.


It pains me to say I didn’t like There Are Rivers in the Sky. While her writing is beautiful (as always) I didn’t really love any of the three storylines, and felt no real connection to any of the characters. I kept hoping I would enjoy it more, but when it became a chore for me to pick it up, I decided it was not for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

I thought overall this book was beautiful, was it a bit long for me? Yes, but I get its hard to connect so many timelines in a shorter book. The way people in different times were connected and it's done in such a beautiful and lyrical way. Even though it felt long, I thought it was beautiful and I recommend it.

I got an e-arc of this book on NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

There Are Rivers in the Sky is a beautiful, poignant novel. Following three timelines that are linked through water and the story of Gilgamesh, Shafak creates a slow and powerful story.

Hopeful. Illuminating. Spanning from Nineveh to London, “There Are Rivers in the Sky” by Elif Shafak follows three characters across three different time periods.

Immediately thrown into the imagery of the world, this is a slow building book that tugs at your heart. It follows Narin, a young Yazidi girl from a family of water-dowsers; Zaleekah, a modern day hydrologist; and King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums, an archeologist with bedazzling memory searching for remains of the Epic of Gilgamesh. While unlike on paper, the three are connected in many ways as they overcome being misunderstood and treated unfairly. Restless hearts without a home, they each go on their own adventure of sorts.

It was interesting seeing how the past and present bleed into each other, with one rain drop bringing so much chaos. The book looks at what remains after destruction and how water is both a giver and taker.

I can tell the author did her research but felt like it was fact overload at times and unnatural to include. I definitely learned a lot though (like what ghost streams are) and it made me appreciate drops of rain more and the cycle they survive. “Water is the consummate immigrant, trapped in transit, never able to settle.”

In the ancient city of Nineveh, on the bank of the River Tigris, King Ashurbanipal of Mesopotamia, erudite but ruthless, built a great library that would crumble with the end of his reign. From its ruins, however, emerged a poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, that would infuse the existence of two rivers and bind together three lives.
Both a source of life and harbinger of death, rivers—the Tigris and the Thames—transcend history, transcend fate: “Water remembers. It is humans who forget.”

WOW..I don't know where to begin. I saw a description of this book often described as brutally beautiful and I find it appropriate. The ability of a great writer to bring to life those periods of history that need to be remembered humbles this reader. There are three main characters in this book: King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums who is born along the Thames River (1840); Narin and her grandmother both Yazidi and trying to make their to make her way back their way back to ancestral land along the Tigris (2014 now slowly under the control of ISIS); Dr. Zaleekah Clarke now living in a houseboat on the Thames and trying to prove if water has memory of history and events 2018). Oh course there are many other characters that intersect with each of the main three that assist (as well as hinder) the journey of each main character). Readers--I'll issue a tissue alert. There was a line that affected me to the point of needing to put the book down for a bit: "It takes two and a half minutes to execute sixty four human beings; the time for a drop of rain to reach the ground".

Elif Shafak is an incredible storyteller. Sadly five stars does not seem nearly enough.

Thank you Netgalley and Knopf for the eARC. Maybe the best read for me this year.

Wow! This book was incredible! I loved every minute of it and it just really came together at the end. The ending also broke my heart in so many different ways. What a book! Definitely will be on my top 10 of 2024!

Thank you so much for the ARC! Love you so much!

This was such a beautiful story. It was so well crafted & gorgeous writing.

It takes place over three different timelines and time periods. Water is the underlying theme and connects the three stories. The storytelling is filled with history of Mesopotamia & discussion of different cultures.

There is also two timelines that take place in present day & tackles current events/issues as well. Parts of it were gut wrenching, sad & heartbreaking to see.

The story was thought provoking, interesting, emotional. I really enjoyed reading this one & certainly recommend it!

“Water remembers. It is humans who forget.”

Many thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for the advanced reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review!

I love Elif Shafak, and her recent work combining environment and history has been so touching and lovely. There's a sense of homesickness to her characters, even the ones who never saw the country their families left that is so deeply felt and personal. I can't speak to everyone with family history in Turkey and around it, but for me, it voices that loss in such perfect, cathartic ways. This one took me longer to read than her others, both to start and finish, in part because I found the sadness so strong, but I'm excited for more people to continue discovering her!

“Water remembers. It is humans who forget.”

Do you believe that water holds memories?

Through one single drop of water - originally falling as a raindrop onto the head of King Ashurbanipal of Mesopotamia in the ancient city of Nineveh as he is about to murder his counselor; the same drop evaporating and eventually returning to earth as a snowflake by the river Thames at the birth of Arthur Smyth, a boy with a remarkable mind born into poverty in 1840’s London and fascinated from an early age by all things Mesopotamian; returning once more as a drop of water from a sacred temple in Iraq to Narin, a nine-year-old Yazidi girl about to go deaf living by the river Tigris in Turkey and preparing to travel to Iraq to be baptized; and finally, as a tear shed by hydrologist Zaleekah, living on a houseboat on the river Thames in London in 2018 - the stories of Arthur, Narin, and Zaleekah are all masterfully connected and intertwined in [author:Elif Shafak's|6542440] most ambitious and rewarding work to date.

Not surprisingly, water plays an essential role in this stunning novel, being both a source of life as well as „the messenger of death“, a carrier of disease and destruction, even flooding entire ancient cities. Looming large, too, are ancient Nineveh and its wonders, among them the oldest poem in the world, "The Epic of Gilgamesh", found on clay tablets from King Ashurbanipal’s library.

The amount of research that must have gone into this novel is breathtaking, yet it reads as seamlessly as if it were an entirely fictional account. It also poses the intriguing question - investigated by Zaleekah as a scientific theory, though sadly we don’t hear much more about that - of water being able to hold memories.

This book has cemented why Elif Shafak is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors: while I loved her previous works, „There Are Rivers in the Sky“ feels grander both in scope and in depth, and is even more beautifully written than her other books. It is a long, epic tale - and every one of the three storylines could have been its own book, so rich in detail are they, though Zaleekah’s storyline felt the most undeveloped to me - but it never feels excessive, the story flowing seamlessly between the protagonists and taking the reader along.

Expertly crafted, mesmerizing, and written in heartbreakingly beautiful prose, „There Are Rivers in the Sky“ is one of my favorite books this year.

TW for mental health, suicide, suicidal thoughts, sexual abuse, murder, genocide, ISIS.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

"There Are Rivers in the Sky" is slated to be published in August 20, 2024.

There Are Rivers in the Sky takes place over three separate timelines (plus an intro in ancient Mesopotamia), with water serving as a theme and loosely connecting thread (as well as metaphor for topics like immigration). Arthur, a London pauper turned cuneiform scholar, ends up traveling from England to the Ottoman Empire in search of missing tablets of the epic poem of Gilgamesh. Narin, descended from seers in Turkey, is part of the long-persecuted Yazidi people. And Zaleekhah, a divorcing hydrologist in London, is on a personal journey that improbably ends up crossing paths with Narin's. The stories mix together reasonably successfully, although the ending seemingly comes out of nowhere; it's not that it's totally improbable, but more that neither of the contemporary narratives suggest that it would be possible.
The book did give meaningful attention to the areas once in Mesopotamia AND to recent/current atrocities of ISIS and others, including (to put it generously) the indifference of Western nations to destruction of cultural inheritance. That alone made it worth, at times, wading through some draggy parts and cringey dialogue.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the arc!

Elif Shafak's There Are Rivers in the Sky is a masterfully crafted novel that showcases her remarkable erudition, her ability to create compelling characters and her unique poetic style . The narrative unfolds over different timelines and perspectives, weaving together the lives of three protagonists: Arthur, a Victorian-era scholar in London obsessed with finding the lost poems of the Epic of Gilgamesh ; Narin, a young girl navigating the unrest of 2014 Turkey during the rise of ISIS, with her wise and sensible grandmother ; and Zaleekah, a young water scientist that after getting a divorce moves into a houseboat on the Thames and is struggling to reconcile with her past.

What I found interesting is the what binds these characters together is their connection to the ancient stories carried by the waters of the Tigris and Thames rivers . Shafak's storytelling is not only atmospheric but also rich in historical and cultural layers, where each character in the book is inexorably drawn to these ancient narratives that pierce through their lives in unimaginable ways. I like this idea of stories bringing people together, even across time and place.

The novel stands out for its beautifully written prose and for the depth and resonance of its themes. Shafak explores the weight of history and the ways in which the past continues to shape the present. The shifting timelines and perspectives create a tapestry of connections, highlighting the timelessness of human experience.

It’s a fantastic novel and one of the most memorable and anticipated books of the year. Shafak's ability to blend history, mythology, and contemporary issues into a compelling narrative makes this book a must read if you’re interested in literature that challenges and enriches the mind.