There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak

Description

When London museum curator Lila Gilani gets a worn chest containing her grandmother’s things, she goes back to Istanbul. Inside are faded journals, hand-painted maps, and tiny vials of water from old wells. Lila learns about Pembe Özdemir’s youth through her first-person stories. They take place in the Anatolian village where rivers used to flow. Pembe’s early years are marked by the population swaps between Greece and Turkey in the 1940s. Her family’s forced move alters the calm flow of rivers into the jarring currents of loss and displacement.

Pembe speaks of how she learned to be a midwife from her mother, how she delivered infants by lamplight next to rushing streams, and how she used secret water rituals to wake up the spirits in the area. Her village’s stories, which are passed down through whispered songs, say that there are rivers in the sky that convey the prayers of people who have been uprooted. Nights spent by the communal well turn into peaceful magic: elders drawing old symbols on stone ledges, children gathering moonlit dew in copper bowls, and Pembe drawing these scenes in the margins of her notebooks.

The novel follows Pembe’s trip from Anatolia to post-war Paris, where she joins a group of Turkish exiles. It takes her through the dusty village and the winding alleyways of Istanbul. There, Lila finds memoirs about cafés where writers read poems to people who had to leave their homes, as well as letters between Pembe and a Greek childhood friend letters that brought them back together and crossed an ancient border. These pieces of history reflect Lila’s own struggle with her cultural identity in modern-day London, where she curates shows on Ottoman antiques but feels lost amid the museum’s marble corridors.

Elif Shafak’s writing flows like water, full of sensory details and metaphors for change and fluidity. Readers walk through secret waterways under Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, enter Pembe’s Parisian apartment filled with mint tea and jazz recordings, and follow Lila’s footsteps through the British Museum’s echoing halls. Shafak adds moments of soft charm along the way: Lila saw a clear river meandering through the Beijing display. At her “Rivers of Memory” show, people cried as holographic water kissed old photos. And there was a late-night talk in a moonlit castle that made the line between past and present blurry.

Pembe’s tale goes from being a midwife and artist to becoming an activist who helped refugees in France in the 1970s. Lila’s story goes from being a curator to a storyteller, reclaiming her own legacy by giving other women’s voices more power. The story ends with a formal opening at Istanbul’s Museum of Water, when people from Pembe’s village meet and release paper boats down the Bosporus in honor of the rivers that never stop flowing.

There Are Rivers in the Sky is a great example of Elif Shafak’s storytelling skills. It combines history, mythology, and personal confession to make a powerful statement on how stories shape our shared memory. It tells us that the rivers of the sky keep flowing, giving hope and connectedness to people of all ages, even when people are forced to move or forget their past.

About the Author

Elif Shafak is an award-winning novelist and public intellectual, writing in both Turkish and English. Celebrated for her lyrical examination of identity, exile, and memory, she is the author of The Forty Rules of Love, Honour, and The Island of Missing Trees. Shafak lectures globally on literature and social justice.

Product Details

• Title: There Are Rivers in the Sky
• Author: Elif Shafak
• ISBN‑13: 9788426428905
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Published: May 5, 2021
• Pages: 400
• Binding: Paperpack