There are Rivers in the Sky

From the celebrated author of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World comes an exquisitely constructed meditation on love, loss, and memory centred on three figures living on the banks of the River Thames and the River Tigris.

Waterstones Fiction Book of the Month for April 2025

The new novel from the Booker-shortlisted, internationally bestselling author of The Island of Missing Trees and 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World.

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.

MEDIA REVIEWS

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