There Are Rivers in the Sky is a Masterpiece of Historical Fiction and Human Connection

It’s been a long time since I have read a book that gripped me like There Are Rivers In The Sky by Elif Shafak. On a literary level, it is a stunning piece of prose. Shafak’s mastery of the English language, especially given that her mother tongue is Turkish, is phenomenal. Conceptually, the story is intelligent, heart-wrenching, soul stirring and imaginative. As a lover of historical fiction, I was drawn into the history of Mesopotamia and especially the way stories from that time were recorded.

I was also intensely drawn into the narratives of the three protagonists, who, miles and years apart, are connected fundamentally in the most simple way. Arthur hails from the most destitute slums of London in the mid 1800’s. Narin is a Yazidi girl living with her grandmother on the bank of the River Tigris in Turkey in 2014. And Zaleekhah, a climate and water researcher in London 2018, has just had her world upended. The lives of these disparately unconnected people will be woven together through their connection to a powerful poem, thought to be the first poem ever written, The Epic of Gilgamesh. Timeless in its meaning, this poem connects cultures, continents and centuries and shows the power and interconnectedness of all things.

This book is truly a stunning work of literary fiction!