Elif Shafak
I have read four of Elif’s books and, for me, There are Rivers in the Sky is the finest so far. Previously, it was The Island of Missing Trees, a tale told around a divided Cyprus as observed by a fig tree. Yes, you read that right.
Elif writes with passion in all her books, exploring subjects that matter deeply to her—cultural, political and for silenced people, such as the Yazidis in this novel. Of Turkish descent, she moved with her mother to Spain aged 10 and now lives in London, unable to return to her homeland for fear of arrest under obscenity charges relating to two of her novels; The Gaze and 10 minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World—the latter a wonderful and surreal Booker-shortlisted novel narrated by an Istanbul sex worker murdered and dumped in a rubbish bin.
There are Rivers in the Sky is quite remarkable. The novel is written from the point of view of three different people. There’s a man born into poverty in Victorian London, Arthur, the King of the Slums and Sewers, who has a remarkable talent for memorisation and who becomes obsessed with finding the original written version of the Epic of Gilgamesh within the ruins of Nineveh. Also, a young Yazidi girl and her grandmother caught up in the ISIS-controlled areas of Iraq whilst travelling to the girl’s baptism in the Valley of Lalish. Finally, a woman, a hydrologist, living in a houseboat on the Thames in Chelsea in 2018, who’s cowered by tragedy.
Linking all three is the idea that water retains the memory of where it has been. And a single drop links all three tales. The link is tenuous at times, it has to be said, but water is the theme of the story; it’s scarcity for some, pollution for many and the effects of climate change for all.
There is love and happiness and laughter within the story, of course, but it is a solemn read with an ever-present undercurrent of sadness, despair and, at times, barely bearable suffering. Elif’s narrative of ISIS torture and genocide, and its treatment of women and children, will stay with me for a long time. As will organ transplant harvesting and trafficking, a barbarous practice seemingly employed by ISIS to raise funds. An issue close to my own heart, or rather, kidney. This is the hardest-hitting book I’ve read since Home Fires by Kamila Shamsie, a book that I actually shouted at.
At the end of the book is a section ‘notes to the reader’. Don’t skip it, as I normally do. As well as highlighting the enormous amount of reading Elif did by way of research, it’s also, in parts, fascinating and thought-provoking. One section, in particular, struck a nerve. Elif questions who ‘owns’ cultural heritage: museums, collectors, the modern country in which it was rediscovered? She goes on to make the point that literature, particularly fiction, is well placed to explore such a complexity ‘with nuance, depth, care and empathy’. She continues that fiction allows us to grasp subjects from multiple angles, ‘a freedom we are steadily losing in the age of social media and unfeeling algorithms’. I thoroughly agree and would also add, that of shrinking attention spans.
Well worth a read, as is The Island of Missing Trees, 10 minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World and The Forty Rules of Love.
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