There are Rivers in the Sky: The beautiful Sunday Times bestseller from the author of The Island of Missing Trees & BBC Between the Covers Book Club pick

I've read several books by this author and have enjoyed them all so was keen to read her latest when it was published in paperback. Whenever I hear Elif Shafak is being interviewed I always try to listen as I love her voice - it has a gorgeous velvety quality that always sounds soothing. This book was first published in 2024. It has 470 pages split into five parts. We see the story from the perspective of three (four?) characters who take turns to be the main focus of the narrative. The writing is beautiful and you can sink into it - soaking up very glorious detail. And detail is a huge part of this author's style, taking time to show us in luxurious depth. Along with seeing, you also smell, feel, hear and sometimes even taste what is around. As you are reading there is a temptation to speed ahead to find out more but take your time and go with the flow of the narrative. Every so often the author gives lists of words which always seem to demand that you slow down and that will make the book seem at its best. Amongst the rich language there is also plenty of perceptive observations from the natural world and the humans that inhabit it. I often paused to contemplate a particular sentence. This is a perfect book to read slowly and thoughtfully - encouraging heart rate and blood pressure to reduce. Wound through the main narrative there is much for the reader to learn. The portrait of Victorian life is very visual and the Mesopotamian history is fascinating. We get to know each of the three characters gradually. All are in their separate worlds and very different from each other. Time and locations become closer as connections are revealed showing the beauty of humanity if we take the time to look. Of course, water is used for many metaphors and remains as a strong theme throughout the novel. I loved researching some of the ancient stories as I worked my way through the book - it is almost unbelievable that this civilisation existed such a long time ago but the proof is there. The book is a perfect example of fiction's ability to explain facts. At the end of the book, the author opens up her research and tells how she has used real documents by bending their stories for the narrative of the novel. I love this book and eagerly await her next one.

Thoughtful book and a different style of writing from my normal reads. I would recommend it.

For me Elif Shafak is one of the best novelists writing today. This too is good: intricate plot, fascinating characters, timeless themes, a profound humanity. Its elements of the fantastic bewitched this reader. “This story is a truth through which truth breathes”. She begins with a single drop of rain falling on the head of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal in 630 BCE. The same drop is recycled through the novel. It falls as a snowflake on the lips of Arthur in Victorian London, moistens the parched lips of the Hazidi child Narin in Iraq in 2014 and slips as a teardrop from the eye of scientist Zaleekhah in 2018. The narrative weaves together the lives of man, woman and child, east and west, past present and future. It is an elegy to water which flows in and out of all their lives. It gives and it takes. Two mighty rivers, the Thames and the Tigris, link the characters. There is a desperate sadness to much of the story. The trials of Narin are heart-breaking. The final pages pack an emotional punch that takes the breath away. Rivers is a long novel that moves back and forth in time between Zaleekhah, Arthur and Narin. One or two of the supporting characters I found a little weak – well one in particular. The potency of whole picture, the whole truth, is undeniable. Elif signs off her novel to Nisaba. Nisaba was the ancient Mesopotamian goddess of stories.

So much detail and history is carefully woven into this beautiful tale. A journey of a drop of water that leaps from the days of Ashurbanipal to Turkey and London/Northern Iraq over two centuries. This book rewards slow and careful reading and does not shy away from the horrors that have been meted out to the Yazidi community in the 19th and 21st centuries, and as Elif comments in one of the afterwords, it hasn’t ended yet for some. Rewarding and not always easy, and well worth your time.

I was deeply moved by this book, particularly because, when I met my first boyfriend at university, he told me he was from “Mesopotamia” (although he actually came from Mosul in Iraq) because he had found most English people had not heard of Iraq but had heard of Mesopotamia! From this book I have learnt a lot more about his homeland, its history, multiple cultures and people, told in a most engaging and immersive way. The characters are clearly-drawn, with all their flaws and foibles as well as their virtues. The descriptions of the places featured are vivid; you have a real sense of not only what they look like but also their ambience. Although there is no “happy ending” the novel is effectively brought to its conclusion, with many references to follow if you should wish to learn even more.

I found this quite a strange book to read. It mostly wasn’t compelling but I also partly enjoyed it. It’s quite a sad story and I have difficulty trying to sum it up. The book is told from the point of view of three characters who do marry up at the end but I didn’t find it a satisfying ending. My main problem was that in fact there was a fourth voice in the book. That of the author who sounded as though she was writing a non fiction account of background information within a fictional story. It was very jarring, weird and completely stopped the flow of my reading of the story. Would I recommend the book? Probably not. Would I read another by this author? Probably not. It’s a shame because I think the book has potential. Obviously I’m one of the minority as the book has rave reviews and a very good average rating 🤷‍♀️

A book club read for 2026 for my book club. It was a good book, but felt the ending was weak, overall we as a book club gave it 8/10 so thats why I gave it 4 stars.

A beautifully written book that is so wonderfully intertwined it is both extraordinarily grand, yet intricately beautiful. The snippets here and there that call back to other parts of the book shouldn’t take you by surprise, but they do and you find yourself smiling at how simple, yet beautifully created these links are. A stunning journey through time and history. Read this book. You will not be disappointed.

There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak is a beautifully layered novel that flows across time, memory, and geography like the rivers it evokes. Shafak gently weaves history, mythology, and the human longing for belonging, offering a rich glimpse into Middle Eastern culture, spirituality, and storytelling traditions. The characters feel deeply human, carrying the weight of history and identity. By the end, it leaves a quiet book hangover—that lingering feeling where the story stays with you, like an echo of distant waters and ancient lands. Poetic, thoughtful, and deeply immersive. 🌊📚

This book is beautifully crafted combining water, history and the lives of its characters in illuminating prose. The author draws us deep into history, ancient and modern, while setting a descriptive stage at every turn. Highly recommend this book!

This is a marvelous book! The writing is just beautiful, and the storyline (after about page 80) is intense. I loved how the stories wove together… However, it is not for everyone! It is a long read, and not at all one you can whip through. In my 20 person book club, about 3 of us adored it, 3 hated it. Several did not finish it, and several want to finish it, but just didn’t have time. So - if you love deep, moving, heart touching novels and have a lot of time to read - go for it!

Imperdibile!!!!

Evidently, the author conducted extensive research while writing this book, and that is undeniably impressive. However, the result feels like an overwhelming regurgitation of all that research—every fact, note, and piece of knowledge the author gathered seems to have been crammed into the book. This approach makes the reading experience, firstly, quite dull, and secondly, detrimental to the storytelling and character development. The book suffers from a lack of good editing. Much of the content on Mesopotamian history is repetitive and, frankly, boring. By the end, I found myself increasingly irritated by yet another story about water this, goddess that, Gilgamesh this, and Gilgamesh that, all lacking depth or purpose. The same artifacts—clay tablets, Lamassu, book on Nineveh etc.—pop up relentlessly in nearly every paragraph. I get it: clay tablets and Lamassu are significant. But must every character encounter them, dream about them, love them, own them, dig them up, or draw them? By the book’s conclusion, I half expected a Lamassu to be served at Uncle Malik’s dinner on a clay tablet. The characters are underdeveloped and feel two-dimensional, serving primarily as placeholders for the barrage of research, facts, and stories crammed into the pages. There’s little room for the characters to breathe or come alive. Only Arthur offers any meaningful insight into his life, his experiences, and his motivations. The rest are bland and, at times, outright annoying (which feels harsh to say, given the tragedy of Narim’s life). They offer little in terms of thoughts, dialogue, or purpose. Zalikah gets up, eats breakfast, looks out the window, runs, and is depressed. Narim watches flies and eats food lovingly prepared by her grandmother while we’re reminded for the hundredth time that they are healers despised by others. I understood that the first time—no need for endless repetition. The King of Nineveh makes a fleeting, meaningless appearance with no insight into his story. Most characters are impossibly virtuous, so saintly and tragic that it becomes grating. There’s also little connection between them. The shared elements—the drop of water, the Lamassu, clay tablets, lapis lazuli, and the recurring book—feel contrived and, frankly, unbelievable. Then there’s the book’s central premise—the drop of water—which is absurd. A single drop of water doesn’t travel through space and time. A drop contains about 1,670,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules, which will never come together again in the same way. The concept tying the characters with a drop of water is, quite honestly, nonsense. Other inconsistencies should have been caught by a good editor. For example, milk dripping from newborn Arthur is biologically implausible—he would have drunk a few drops of colostrum at most. Baking biscuits in the oven for 40 minutes? That suggests the author hasn’t baked anything herself. And an infant remembering their own birth? Not possible, no matter how genius or savant the baby might be. The book is chaotic. The extensive research would have been better left in the background, allowing more focus on the characters and their stories. Narim’s tragic history takes 200 pages of flower-smelling and water-pondering to unfold, but the actual tragedy is presented in just a few pages. What a lost opportunity. Zalikah and her friend contribute little beyond drinking lavender coffee (mentioned at least five times), drawing Lamassu, tatooing ancient symbols and baking cakes—not enough to sustain good literature. Malik’s family is barely fleshed out, and we learn nothing meaningful about the King or the everyday lives of Nineveh’s people. Leila seems erratic and one-dimensional, defined only by sleepwalking and divining. What truly binds these characters together? The answer, it seems, is nothing substantial. In summary, this book felt like an over-researched, sprawling collection of facts that ultimately amounted to very little.