Elif Shafak's THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY

Thanks to partners NetGalley and Vintage Anchor Books for the digital ARC of Elif Shafak’s There Are Rivers in the Sky. The book is available now for purchase!

Elif Shafak’s There Are Rivers in the Sky features the elements that I’ve loved in so many of her books: a touch of magic, multiple generations and eras, and different threads that ultimately weave together.

The novel begins with a drop of rain and King Ashurbanipal of Mesopotamia, a cruel king whose legacy affects the lives of many, including Arthur, born in a sewer in Victorian England; Narin, a Yazidi girl in Turkey with a disorder causing deafness; and Zaleekah, a hydrologist whose crumbled marriage leads her to take a new life direction.

As the narrative shifts between their stories, Shafak explores the impacts of climate change, of poverty and inequity, of ignorance. Her writing is simply gorgeous, both on the sentence level and in the ways it peels back the layers of the characters’ connections.

There were moments when the whimsy of the raindrop didn’t work for me, occasions when I felt as if the pace of the narrative could have been a little faster. Ultimately, though, this one ranks in the top half of Shafak’s books for me, driven by her exploration of the cycles that spin through human history.

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