There Are Rivers in the Sky

The award winning British-Turkish novelist Shafak delivers an ambitious and gorgeous novel revolving around three fascinating individuals, the Tigris and Thames rivers, and the ancient poem The Epic of Gilgamesh. The sweeping narrative begins in King Ashurbanipal's Mesopotamian court and ends in modern-day London, with the central thread revolving around the life of a boy known as King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums, from his birth by the Thames in 1840 to his death by the Tigris in 1876. The memorable characters, separated as they are by time and space, may not at first seem to have much in common, but they are connected by something small, crucial, eternal: a single drop of water.