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amuandhermusings 's review for:
There Are Rivers in the Sky
by Elif Shafak
emotional
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
📖 Title: There Are Rivers In The Sky
✍️ Author: Elif Shafak
📚 Genre: Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Multi-Timeline Narrative
🎭 Themes: Memory & Survival, Exile & Identity, Lost Civilizations, Refugee Crisis, Cultural Erasure, The Power of Water, Generational Trauma, Bearing Witness, Resilience Across Time
⭐ Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟/5
There Are Rivers In The Sky is a devastatingly beautiful story — one you cannot rush through.
It demands to be savored, to be sat with.
Set across the fading sands of ancient Mesopotamia and the rain-soaked streets of modern-day London, the story moves between four timelines.
Timelines and History:
• Ancient Mesopotamia (circa 600s BCE):
Collapse of Empire. Memory being buried under conquest. The idea of "what survives when empires fall."
• Victorian London (1850s):
British Empire at its peak. Artifacts stolen from ancient lands, colonial arrogance, erasure of indigenous histories.
• Colonial Mesopotamia (1920s):
After World War I. British Mandate rule, identity crises, archaeological exploitation.
• ISIS Era – Yazidi Genocide (2014):
In modern-day Mesopotamia (Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Iran), ISIS unleashed terror.
Ethnic cleansing of Yazidis, genocide, mass displacement, and a world too slow to act.
• Modern London (2010s–2020s):
Refugee crisis today. Diaspora struggles.
Survivors rebuilding fragile lives, searching for belonging, carrying memory against forgetting.
We meet Arthur, born in the sewers of London in 1840, at the edge of the Thames. His life’s mission is a quest for the sacred tablets that hold poems dating back centuries to Mesopotamia.
Narin, a nine-year-old girl in Turkey, 2014, carries her own history as a Yazidi, waiting to be baptized in Iraq by the River Tigris.
Zaleekhah, a young water scientist in 2018, studies water with a personal connection that runs deeper than science.
Their struggles converge in aching, unforgettable ways. By the final chapters, the timelines collapse into each other.
Past and present merge, reminding us that the genocides of history are never really "over."
They live on — in the displaced, in the forgotten, in the children who carry stories in their blood even when the world stops listening.
And beneath it all, echoes the Epic of Gilgamesh — the first story humanity tried to remember.
This novel asks: Where do we belong? What survives when everything else is lost? Can memory endure when the world chooses to forget? It also explores deeper questions about survival, bearing witness, cultural annihilation, and the nature of identity after exile.
What Shafak does here is extraordinary: she shows how exile is not just a matter of geography but of the heart.
She strips away the myths of civilization and progress to reveal the raw, pulsing human need beneath it all — to be seen, to be known, to be rooted somewhere, even if only in another’s memory.
When Shafak writes of rivers, she is really writing about trauma that cannot be held back, of histories that cannot be buried
What this book teaches:
• Civilization is not built on glory. It is built on graves.
• Memory is not a luxury. It is a weapon against erasure.
• Exile is not just about losing your land. It is about losing your language, your mother’s voice, your own reflection.
• Healing does not come from forgetting. Healing comes from bearing witness.
There Are Rivers In The Sky left me wrecked and awake.
It stripped away my illusions about history, about survival, about belonging.
It forced me to understand that for some, simply existing is an act of rebellion against the world’s indifference.
Some books entertain you. This one changes you.
✍️ Author: Elif Shafak
📚 Genre: Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Multi-Timeline Narrative
🎭 Themes: Memory & Survival, Exile & Identity, Lost Civilizations, Refugee Crisis, Cultural Erasure, The Power of Water, Generational Trauma, Bearing Witness, Resilience Across Time
⭐ Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟/5
There Are Rivers In The Sky is a devastatingly beautiful story — one you cannot rush through.
It demands to be savored, to be sat with.
Set across the fading sands of ancient Mesopotamia and the rain-soaked streets of modern-day London, the story moves between four timelines.
Timelines and History:
• Ancient Mesopotamia (circa 600s BCE):
Collapse of Empire. Memory being buried under conquest. The idea of "what survives when empires fall."
• Victorian London (1850s):
British Empire at its peak. Artifacts stolen from ancient lands, colonial arrogance, erasure of indigenous histories.
• Colonial Mesopotamia (1920s):
After World War I. British Mandate rule, identity crises, archaeological exploitation.
• ISIS Era – Yazidi Genocide (2014):
In modern-day Mesopotamia (Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Iran), ISIS unleashed terror.
Ethnic cleansing of Yazidis, genocide, mass displacement, and a world too slow to act.
• Modern London (2010s–2020s):
Refugee crisis today. Diaspora struggles.
Survivors rebuilding fragile lives, searching for belonging, carrying memory against forgetting.
We meet Arthur, born in the sewers of London in 1840, at the edge of the Thames. His life’s mission is a quest for the sacred tablets that hold poems dating back centuries to Mesopotamia.
Narin, a nine-year-old girl in Turkey, 2014, carries her own history as a Yazidi, waiting to be baptized in Iraq by the River Tigris.
Zaleekhah, a young water scientist in 2018, studies water with a personal connection that runs deeper than science.
Their struggles converge in aching, unforgettable ways. By the final chapters, the timelines collapse into each other.
Past and present merge, reminding us that the genocides of history are never really "over."
They live on — in the displaced, in the forgotten, in the children who carry stories in their blood even when the world stops listening.
And beneath it all, echoes the Epic of Gilgamesh — the first story humanity tried to remember.
This novel asks: Where do we belong? What survives when everything else is lost? Can memory endure when the world chooses to forget? It also explores deeper questions about survival, bearing witness, cultural annihilation, and the nature of identity after exile.
What Shafak does here is extraordinary: she shows how exile is not just a matter of geography but of the heart.
She strips away the myths of civilization and progress to reveal the raw, pulsing human need beneath it all — to be seen, to be known, to be rooted somewhere, even if only in another’s memory.
When Shafak writes of rivers, she is really writing about trauma that cannot be held back, of histories that cannot be buried
What this book teaches:
• Civilization is not built on glory. It is built on graves.
• Memory is not a luxury. It is a weapon against erasure.
• Exile is not just about losing your land. It is about losing your language, your mother’s voice, your own reflection.
• Healing does not come from forgetting. Healing comes from bearing witness.
There Are Rivers In The Sky left me wrecked and awake.
It stripped away my illusions about history, about survival, about belonging.
It forced me to understand that for some, simply existing is an act of rebellion against the world’s indifference.
Some books entertain you. This one changes you.