Post #247
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There Are Rivers in the Sky
Elif Shafak
That’s what I chose for our tiny book club trio with my special people✨
When I first saw the title and the cover, I expected something poetic, maybe even a little feminine and romantic. I definitely didn’t expect Mesopotamia, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Yazidis, genocide, museums, water politics and organ trafficking ‼️
And honestly, this book was overwhelming.
Elif Shafak weaves together three lives separated by centuries and geography:
1. Arthur, a boy growing up in Victorian London
2.Narin, a young Yazidi girl living near the Tigris in 2014
3. Zaleekhah, a hydrologist in modern London.
Their stories are connected by two great rivers, the Tigris and the Thames, and by a single drop of water.
Shafak is a Turkish-British writer whose novels often explore identity, history, cultural divisions and forgotten voices. For this book, she drew heavily on Mesopotamian history and the Epic of Gilgamesh. Arthur was also inspired by the real Victorian Assyriologist George Smith, whose life and work helped bring the ancient world of Nineveh and Gilgamesh to wider attention.
What fascinated me most?
Probably everything I learned.
Mesopotamia. Nineveh. Gilgamesh. Yazidi culture and beliefs. The history of the Tigris. The way water has shaped civilizations. And the whole question of museums and cultural heritage: when an ancient object is taken from one country and preserved in a museum in another, who does it really belong to? Who owns the past? ( It was my Task 2 question in IELTS exam last year 👀)
The hardest part for me was Narin’s story.
The Yazidi persecution and genocide, the violence, displacement and what happens to vulnerable people during war were incredibly difficult to read about. Some parts were so horrifying that I found myself thinking, How can people actually do this to other people?
As always, that left me with one of the biggest questions of the book:
Are people born good or evil?
Or can circumstances, power, fear and hatred turn ordinary people into something terrible? (Hello again, Hobbes and Rousseau)
I had a similar feeling reading this as I did with Hosseini: I was emotionally exhausted, but also grateful that I had learned something I knew so little about.
I don’t think this was an easy book to read. There is simply too much history, too much suffering and too many ideas to absorb at once.
But perhaps that is exactly why it stays with you.
Water remembers. Humans forget.
#review
#отзыв
Elif Shafak
That’s what I chose for our tiny book club trio with my special people✨
When I first saw the title and the cover, I expected something poetic, maybe even a little feminine and romantic. I definitely didn’t expect Mesopotamia, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Yazidis, genocide, museums, water politics and organ trafficking ‼️
And honestly, this book was overwhelming.
Elif Shafak weaves together three lives separated by centuries and geography:
1. Arthur, a boy growing up in Victorian London
2.Narin, a young Yazidi girl living near the Tigris in 2014
3. Zaleekhah, a hydrologist in modern London.
Their stories are connected by two great rivers, the Tigris and the Thames, and by a single drop of water.
Shafak is a Turkish-British writer whose novels often explore identity, history, cultural divisions and forgotten voices. For this book, she drew heavily on Mesopotamian history and the Epic of Gilgamesh. Arthur was also inspired by the real Victorian Assyriologist George Smith, whose life and work helped bring the ancient world of Nineveh and Gilgamesh to wider attention.
What fascinated me most?
Probably everything I learned.
Mesopotamia. Nineveh. Gilgamesh. Yazidi culture and beliefs. The history of the Tigris. The way water has shaped civilizations. And the whole question of museums and cultural heritage: when an ancient object is taken from one country and preserved in a museum in another, who does it really belong to? Who owns the past? ( It was my Task 2 question in IELTS exam last year 👀)
The hardest part for me was Narin’s story.
The Yazidi persecution and genocide, the violence, displacement and what happens to vulnerable people during war were incredibly difficult to read about. Some parts were so horrifying that I found myself thinking, How can people actually do this to other people?
As always, that left me with one of the biggest questions of the book:
Are people born good or evil?
Or can circumstances, power, fear and hatred turn ordinary people into something terrible? (Hello again, Hobbes and Rousseau)
I had a similar feeling reading this as I did with Hosseini: I was emotionally exhausted, but also grateful that I had learned something I knew so little about.
I don’t think this was an easy book to read. There is simply too much history, too much suffering and too many ideas to absorb at once.
But perhaps that is exactly why it stays with you.
Water remembers. Humans forget.
#review
#отзыв
