There are Rivers in the Sky

There Are Rivers in the Sky is a rich, sweeping novel set between the 19th century and modern times, about love and loss, memory and erasure, hurt and healing, centred around three enchanting characters living on the banks of the River Thames and the River Tigris – their lives all curiously touched by the epic of Gilgamesh.

Review

It will make you think, cry, rage – and hope. It is Elif Shafak at her best ― The New Statesman

Gloriously expansive and intellectually rich... a magnificent achievement ― The Spectator

Richly evocative. A fascinating stream of storytelling. ― Financial Times

Engrossing. I turned the pages hungrily, carried by Shafak’s energetic prose and confident that it was heading towards a coherent and rewarding ending. As ever, Shafak did not disappoint. ― I Paper

An absorbing novel. Shafak is a novelist whose interest in mapping the intricately related world and its history goes beyond literary device. ― Guardian

Elif Shafak is a unique and powerful voice in world literature -- Ian McEwan

Shafak makes a new home for us in words -- Colum McCann

A writer of important, beautiful, painful, truthful novels -- Marian Keyes

A brilliant, unforgettable novel, which raises big ideas of 'who owns the past' with nuance and complexity. Elif Shafak ties together diverse time periods and places in a way that seems both natural and wonderfully unexpected. -- Mary Beard

Bright, vivid and timeless like rivers. -- Philippa Gregory

About the Author

Elif Shafak is an award-winning British Turkish novelist, whose work has been translated into fifty-eight languages. The author of twenty books, thirteen of which are novels, she is a bestselling author in many countries around the world. Shafak’s novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the RSL Ondaatje Prize. The Island of Missing Trees was a Sunday Times bestseller, and was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and the Women’s Prize for Fiction. There are Rivers in the Sky, which won an Edward Stanford Award for Fiction, is her latest novel.

Shafak holds a PhD in political science, and is a Fellow and a Vice President of the Royal Society of Literature. She has been awarded the medal of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and, in 2024, was awarded the British Academy President's Medal for ‘her excellent body of work which demonstrates an incredible intercultural range’.