There are Rivers in the Sky
Elif Shafak, 2024
464 pages
Read in 2026.05
Check the synopsis and details on amazon.com
🔽 Summary and quick note 🔽
✔ It's about an Assyrian king, a boy in Victorian London, a Yazidi girl, a depressed Londoner, and a drop of water
✔ The story freely moves beyond borders of time, space and cultures
✔ Heart breaking yet heartwarming, unique reading experience
★★★★★ It's like the story is telling us, "yes, life is hard" while hugging us calmly. From the Assyrian king to the depressed Londoner, though it's a fiction, it tells a fundamental truth that we are all connected. Heart breaking yet heartwarming experiene.
English reviews, ENG_Asia, ENG_Family, ENG_Female_led, ENG_Historical Fiction, ENG_History, ENG_LGBTQ, ENG_London, ENG_Religion
🔽 Book review 🔽
Breathtaking and heart grabbing, thought provoking, heart breaking yet heartwarming... endless words to describe this reading experience.
A Turkish British author, who was born in France and grew up in Europe and Turkey, after her parents separated she lived with her grandmother, which she mentions in the afterword that she was an inspiration.
She lives in the UK, chased by Turkish government, she now only writes in English.
It's not difficult to understand why her stories are shaped this way, i.e. impossible to pigeonhole.
In this book, we have the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal from around 600 BC, a boy who was born in the poverty in the Victorian London, a Yazidi girl who just wanted to live peacefully a decade ago, and a Londoner who is going through her divorce and depression - and a drop of water.
It's difficult to describe the synopsis or the plotline.
The story freely moves beyond borders of time, space and cultures, as if it's telling us it's meaningless to cling to one single storyline, because, we are broader than that, aren't we.
The characters are so far from each other, yet each of them struggles, each unique, each thinking "I should be somewhere else", and all connected to water... But that sounds like all of us!
The story is telling us, "yes, life is hard" while hugging us calmly.
The Middle East is a troubled region, it has always been as far as we can remember, but it's also a region very rich in culture and very cosmopolitan, or at least some parts are.
But it's not about West vs East, or civilised vs exotic etc, Shafak tells us that it's not as simple as that.
Or maybe our story in a way is more simple than that, because we are all connected and we're just a part of the big picture.
We can't avoid realising that our individual existence is actually so small.
The book digs up our humanity's proud past and painful past, mostly painful and sadly recent, and it asks the hard question; what exactly is the most important thing in your life?
In afterword she tells us about her wide research, and that part itself is precious as the main story.
Like anyone else who read the book, I am now keen to know more about Mesopotamia and Yazidi culture.
The author believes in the power of fiction, that fictions can pursue the truth.
It's my first time reading Shafak, and I'm immediately looking to get more books by her.
🔽 Related pages 🔽
English reviews, ENG_Asia, ENG_Family, ENG_Female_led, ENG_Historical Fiction, ENG_History, ENG_LGBTQ, ENG_London, ENG_Religion
🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
There Are Rivers in the Sky: A Novel
赤パンの本棚 akapan's bookshelf 