British Turkish novelist Elif Shafak is justifiably one of the most beloved writers in the world. This is her 12th novel and is already hitting bestseller lists. The title will resonate with New Zealanders, since, of late, we have had a fair few rivers in the sky dumping colossal amounts of water. For Shafak, rivers in the sky are not so threatening, but a powerful metaphor for her novel of four separate time schemes. In one, a girl’s grandmother tells her, “While it is true that the body is mortal, the soul is a perennial traveller – not unlike a drop of water.” Later, as their situation worsens impossibly, she says, “Whatever happens, tell it to the water. It will take away the pain and fear. And, even if you cannot find a flowing stream, remember it is in you. You are made of water.”
Around 640BC, a drop of rain falls to the city of Nineveh, Mesopotamia, and lands on the head of powerful and cruel King Ashurbanipal. During his reign, Nineveh, on the banks of the Tigris, was “the world’s largest and richest city”. Ashurbanipal was in possession of the Epic of Gilgamesh, inscribed in cuneiform on clay tablets. This epic poem, after its rediscovery in the 19th century, inflamed much of Europe because it seemed to provide veracity to stories in the Old Testament, not the least that of Noah’s ark and the flood.
In 1840, a baby is born to an impoverished mudlark on the slimy banks of the filthy River Thames and dubbed by those who assist in his birth King Arthur of the Slums and Sewers. Here, the drop is transformed into snow, and lands on his newborn tongue. Arthur not only has supernatural powers of memory, he is also a genius. From his rudimentary education, he goes on to be an apprentice printer at Bradbury & Evans, where he reads Nineveh and Its Remains, which gives him his lifelong interest in the ancient kingdom.
When, by chance, he sees the arrival of lamassu at the British Museum, his passion is further awakened. These are massive limestone sculptures, half-human, half-beast, with the head of a man, wings of an eagle, body of a bull or lion and often five legs.
He inveigles his way into the affection of a museum director, and semi-miraculously teaches himself to read cuneiform from the very same tablets that once graced Ashurbanipal’s library. His fate is set – in the 1860s, he sets off to Mesopotamia to dig for the missing passages of Gilgamesh.
Two other periods are explored, both very recent – 2014 and 2018. In the first, Mesopotamia is ravaged by war. Isis is active – murdering, misogynistic and terrifying. In the second, a water scientist takes up residence in a houseboat on the Thames. She, too, is captive to the mysterious and seemingly addictive notion of Nineveh. Through Zaleekhah, Shafik explores more watery facts, mostly doleful – dolphins around the world “retain residues of long-banned chemicals”; eels in the Thames have high concentrations of cocaine and caffeine. Zaleekhah has an abiding interest in buried rivers, such as the Bièvre, a river that once flowed through Paris.
Novels that switch between periods and characters are often hard work and less than entertaining. In Shafak’s magical hands, the stories never waver. Locations are vividly described, empathy for all protagonists is deep and insightful, breadth of knowledge impressive.
In 2014, the child Narin declares, “The world would have been a much more interesting place if everyone was given a chance to meet their ancestors at least for an hour in their lifetime.” There are Rivers in the Sky gives us a chance to do just that.
There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak (Viking, $37) is available now.
