I recommend this 2024 novel unreservedly. I read it because I’ve enjoyed Elif Shafak’s previous work but there has never been anything as riveting as There Are Rivers In the Sky.
It’s about rivers, water, love, cruelty and destruction, hope and redemption among other things and it’s split across four time zones. Ashurbanipal was King of Assyria, six centuries before Christ and gets a mention on the Biblical book of Ezra. He is famous for being a cultured man who built a beautiful library in Nineveh on the bank of the Tigris. He was also a ruthless tyrant and it can seem difficult to reconcile the two sides of his character until you remember that the Nazis were fond of Mozart and reflect that such patterns recur throughout history.
Fast forward to the nineteenth century and Arthur Smyth (inspired by real life Assyriologist, George Smith) is born into poverty but graced with a phenomenal memory and, although it’s never said overtly, is probably on what we would now call the autistic spectrum. He is reading Assyrian cuneiform tablets, from many centuries BC in the British Museum. His quest is to piece together the Saga of Gilgamesh.
Then there’s Narin who lives with her father and grandmother in Turkey in 2014. They are Yazidi people which means they are neither Christian nor Muslim although there are overlapping beliefs and stories. All is fairly peaceful (notwithstanding developers gradually driving local people away) until they decide to go on a religious pilgrimage to Iran where they get caught up in ethnic cleansing of Kurds by ISIS and the sort of horror which makes the soles of my feet go clammy as I read.
Meanwhile Zaleekhah, leaving a failed marriage, is trying to find herself in present day London. Orphaned in childhood because her parents were drowned by the Tigris on a camping trip, she works as a hydrologist. We meet her wealthy, kindly but misguided Uncle Malek and her wise, new friend Nen. Zaleekhah lives in a houseboat on the Thames. Water flows through this novel like a life force.
Eventually – no spoilers – Shafak establishes links between these four narratives and my eyes shone as I read on, as it gradually and seamlessly comes together. There are Rivers in the Sky tells a powerful, if complex, story very accessibly. And Shafak blends the intense power of love, in all its forms (Narin’s grandmother is a wonderful example of selfless, unconditional love) with the importance of storytelling itself as a force against evil whether it’s raping children despised as worthless infidels or, in 21st century London, using money to exploit children for your own ends, even if your intentions are worthy.
It’s a richly spiritual novel too – and I speak as a religious unbeliever. Leila whom Arthur meets on his expeditions to the Tigris has qualities and dimensions which go way beyond sexual attraction and cross the centuries. Narin who has worsening deafness which will soon be total, can sense and understand things beyond herself because she has been schooled by her sagacious grandmother. And Zaleekhah, a 2020s working woman, is driven by decency, as well as struggling with depression but Nen has perceptiveness which goes way beyond ordinary common sense.
There is also a quasi-transcendental environmental message tucked into this novel’s myriad folds and crevices. A precious valley is about to be flooded near Narin’s home in Turkey. The new dam will drown many ancient buildings and artefacts. Water lies as the heart of everything which happens to everyone in the novel. We probably all know that there are a finite number of molecules in the world so that any drop of water has, in a sense, been naturally recycled many times. Shafak uses raindrops as symbolic link between her characters in this stunningly beautiful, multi-dimensional novel.
In short, I loved it. And I think you will too.
Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
