Name: There are Rivers in the Sky
Rating: 4.4 (15 reviews)
ISBN: 9780241988756

Elif Shafak

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.

From the bestselling author of The Island of Missing Trees

There are Rivers in the Sky

soochie

“Hatred is a poison served in three cups. The first is when people despise those they desire because they want to have them in their possession. It's all out of hubris! The second is when people loathe those they do not understand. It's all out of fear! Then there is the third kind—when people hate those they have hurt"

Cassandra Tang

Not every written word is meant for the eyes of every reader. Just as not every spoken word needs to be heard by every eavesdropper. 

Words are like birds. When you publish books, you are setting caged birds free. They can go wherever they please. They can fly over the highest walls and across vast distances, settling in mansions of the gentry, in farmsteads and labourers’ cottages alike. You never know whom those words will reach, whose hearts will succumb to their sweet songs. 

Never make a major decision unless you’ve spent seven days contemplating it. 

… in deciding what will be remembered, a museum, any museum, is also deciding, in part, what will be forgotten. 

A poem is a swallow in flight. You can watch it soar through the infinite sky, you can even feel the wind passing over its wings, but you can never catch it, let alone keep it in a cage. Poems belong to no one. 

We carve our dreams into objects, large or small. The emotions we hold but fail to honour, we try to express through the things we create, trusting that they will outlive us when we are gone, trusting that they will carry something of us through the layers of time, like water seeping through rocks. 

Amelia

"Well, this world is a school and we are its students. Each of us studies something as we pass through. Some people learn love, kindness. Others, I'm afraid, abuse and brutality. But the best students are those who acquire generosity and compassion from their encounters with hardship and cruelty. The ones who choose not to inflict their sufiering on to others. And what you learn is what you take with you to your grave."

Water hardens in adverse circumstances, not unlike the human heart. 

What happens after catastrophes? Those who survive nurse their broken hearts and start all over again, as one always does, as one always must.

In the span of a sentence a storyteller can jump back and forth centuries, as if a millennium could pass in the blink of an eye. But then it takes hours to describe a single event, every minute a stretch, an eternity. "Remember, my heart. Story-time is different from clock-time.” Clock-time, however punctual it may purport to be, is distorted and deceptive. It runs under the illusion that everything is moving steadily forward, and the future, therefore, will always be better than the past. Story-time understands the fragility of peace, the fickleness of circumstances, the dangers lurking in the night but also apprecates small acts ofkindness. That is why minorities do not live in clock-time. They live in story-time.

They called her Nisaba, though, depending on the place and the era, she went by other names, too: Widaba, Naga, Se-Naga... The goddess of grain and harvest, the one who holds sway over the rain, directing every drop that falls from the sky. In her pictures, she carries, in one hand, a stalk of wheatthe symbol of life, renewal and rebirth; in her other hand, she holds a gold stylus and a tablet oflapis lazuli. The roots of agriculture and the roots ofliterature are intertwined, and it is none other than Nisaba who braids them like a lock of her hair.

Nisaba is born of the union of heavens and earth, realms that seem so different and distant that it may not be clear what they have in common, and thus her gift — the art of writing — will always represent a desire to efface dualities, dissolve hierarchies and transcend boundaries. 

But Arthur is convinced that everyone has a gift. Given a chance and a modicum of support, anyone can elevate their skill. In the end, perhaps what separates one individual from another is not talent but passion. And what is passion, if not a restlessness of the heart, an intense yearning to surpass your limits, like a river, overflowing its banks?

Surprisingly engrossing book, beautifully written.  

Great read and absolutely worth the time! The author drifted intro historical facts at points where it was not really necessary and it did not bring mich to the story. But apart from that, delightful read

Juli

I was so excited before I started the book. At page 100, I’m feeling let down. The book’s initial promise has given way to an exhausting, over-the-top drama. From the Yazidi chapters to the England chapters, it’s as if the author threw every dramatic element together, creating a narrative that’s more emotionally abusive than engaging. So I decided not to continue this book.

Bilge Ince

marvelous. one of the only books to have me hooked from start to finish. looking forward to reading more of elif shafak's work ❤️

There are Rivers in the Sky From the bestselling author of The Island of Missing Trees

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