THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY
Author: Elif Shafak
Publisher: Penguin Viking
Reviewer: Beryl Eichenberger
On the cover of Elif Shafak’s new novel There are Rivers in the Sky is a shout from Ruth Ozeki – ’A masterpiece’ – I cannot but agree. Here is a novel that is bound by water, by currents, by waves, by storms, environmental concerns, by cresting stories that take you with them and flow into each other, as drop by drop the connections are made. Shafak is a masterful storyteller. No two books are the same as she takes a subject, creates characters, builds their history meticulously and comments on social issues of the times. I have rarely come across an author that touches me so deeply, whose words ring in my mind, who awakens a need to find out more.
Do we ever look at the water in our coffee and wonder where it has been? Has it travelled down the centuries to land in our cup…is it ’connecting us all beyond the borders of time, geography and identity’. Fanciful, maybe but thoughts that make you look at water differently.
“Water remembers. It is humans who forget” says Shafak as she brings us this world of water- rivers of time – the Thames, the Tigris and, while Shafak employs some magical reality, the reality of the human destruction of natural resources, the resultant hardships, the scarcity, has to be laid at our door.
A monumental story starting with a storm and a single raindrop dropping on to an ancient king’s hair. Spanning centuries and three characters whose lives are interconnected it explores the power of the library: of books and a poem from Ancient Mesopotamia that inspired explorers, which fashioned a story of yesterday, remaining today. Of threatened communities, their tragic demise watched by an uncaring world, and the continued misunderstanding. Of terrorists then and now.
Shafak writes intensely – in such a way that one can only hope that someone out there is listening. Her research is perhaps overwhelming to the layman, but as she crafts her novel the richness of her story and her telling of it is simple and effective. Her narrative flowing and imaginative. A story eminently readable, immersible and creating a desire in the reader to learn more.
From ‘King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums’ born on the banks of the River Thames in 1840 who becomes a self-taught scholar, thirsting for historical knowledge, chasing fragments of “The Epic of Gilgamesh” in Nineveh, an ancient city of Mesopotamia. To the banks of the River Tigris in 2014 and a young talented, hearing afflicted Yazidi girl Narin, whose village is being bulldozed in the wake of a new dam; her and her grandmother must journey through war torn lands in the hope of reaching the sacred lands of their people. And back to the Thames and Zaleekhah, a hydrologist, who has retreated to a houseboat mourning a broken marriage, a life that has lost purpose until an unexpected connection to her homeland changes everything.
All consuming, the waves of this novel will immerse you, draw you into the current and sweep you along in Shafak’s unforgettable prose. A telling story of time, entwined through the most important of our life resources.