There are rivers in the sky

Elif Shafak

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

In the ruins of Nineveh, that ancient city in Mesopotamia, lie in the sand the remains of a long-forgotten poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh.

In Victorian London, an exceptional child is born on the banks of the murky, black River Thames. Arthur's only chance of escaping poverty is his remarkable memory. When his talent earns him a place as an apprentice at a printer, Arthur's world opens up beyond the slums, as one book soon sends him across the seas: Nineveh and Its Remains.

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

In 2018 London, Zalekha, a heartbroken hydrologist, moves to a houseboat on the River Thames to escape the wreckage of her marriage. Zalekha foresees a life devoid of love and meaning—until an unexpected connection to her homeland changes everything.

Elif Shafak's There Are Rivers in the Sky, a dazzling work of fiction from one of the greatest writers of our time, is a rich and sweeping novel that spans centuries, continents, and cultures, intertwined with rivers, rain, and drops of water:

"Water remembers. People forget."