There Are Rivers in the Sky - Hardcover

Shafak, Elif

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593801717 ISBN 13: 9780593801710

Verlag: Knopf Publishing Group, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

From the Booker Prize finalist, author of The Island of Missing Trees, an enchanting new tale about three characters living along two great rivers, all connected by a single drop of water.

"Make place for Elif Shafak on your bookshelf. Make place for her in your heart too. You won't regret it."—Arundhati Roy, winner of the Booker Prize

In the ancient city of Nineveh, on the bank of the River Tigris, King Ashurbanipal of Mesopotamia, erudite but ruthless, built a great library that would crumble with the end of his reign. From its ruins, however, emerged a poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, that would infuse the existence of two rivers and bind together three lives. 

In 1840 London, Arthur is born beside the stinking, sewage-filled River Thames. With an abusive, alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother, Arthur’s only chance of escaping destitution is his brilliant memory. When his gift earns him a spot as an apprentice at a leading publisher, Arthur’s world opens up far beyond the slums, and one book in particular catches his interest: Nineveh and Its Remains.

In 2014 Turkey, Narin, a ten-year-old Yazidi girl, is diagnosed with a rare disorder that will soon cause her to go deaf. Before that happens, her grandmother is determined to baptize her in a sacred Iraqi temple. But with the rising presence of ISIS and the destruction of the family’s ancestral lands along the Tigris, Narin is running out of time. 

In 2018 London, the newly divorced Zaleekah, a hydrologist, moves into a houseboat on the Thames to escape her husband. Orphaned and raised by her wealthy uncle, Zaleekah had made the decision to take her own life in one month, until a curious book about her homeland changes everything.  

A dazzling feat of storytelling, There Are Rivers in the Sky entwines these outsiders with a single drop of water, a drop which remanifests across the centuries. Both a source of life and harbinger of death, rivers—the Tigris and the Thames—transcend history, transcend fate: “Water remembers. It is humans who forget.”

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

ELIF SHAFAK is an award-winning British-Turkish author of a dozen novels, including The Island of Missing Trees, shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award, and 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World, shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her work has been translated into fifty-six languages. She holds a PhD in political science and has taught at universities in Turkey, the U.S. and the UK. She lives in London and is an honorary fellow at Oxford University. 

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By the River Tigris, in olden times

Later, when the storm has passed, everyone will talk about the destruction it left behind, though no one, not even the king himself, will remember that it all began with a single raindrop.

*

It is an early-­summer afternoon in Nineveh, the sky swollen with impending rain. A strange, sullen silence has settled on the city: the birds have not sung since the dawn; the butterflies and dragonflies have gone into hiding; the frogs have abandoned their breeding grounds; the geese have fallen quiet, sensing danger. Even the sheep have been muted, urinating frequently, overcome by fear. The air smells different—­a sharp, salty scent. All day, dark shadows have been amassing on the horizon, like an enemy army that has set up camp, gathering force. They look remarkably still and calm from a distance, but that is an optical illusion, a trick of the eye: the clouds are rolling steadily closer, propelled by a forceful wind, determined to drench the world and shape it anew. In this region where the summers are long and scorching, the rivers mercurial and unforgiving, and the memory of the last flood not yet washed away, water is both the harbinger of life and the messenger of death.

Nineveh is a place like no other: the world’s largest and wealthiest city. Built on a spacious plain on the eastern bank of the Tigris, it is so close to the river that at night babies are hushed to sleep not by a lullaby but by the sound of the waves lapping at the shoreline. This is the capital of a mighty empire, a citadel protected by solid towers, stately battlements, defensive moats, fortified bastions and colossal walls, each rising ninety feet or more. With a population of 175,000 souls, it is an urban gem at the junction of the prosperous highlands of the north and the fertile lowlands of Chaldea and Babylonia to the south. The year is sometime in the 640s bce; and this ancient region, which is lush with perfumed gardens, bubbling fountains and irrigation canals, but which will be forgotten and dismissed by future generations as an arid desert and abject wasteland, is Mesopotamia.

One of the clouds advancing toward the city this afternoon is bigger and darker than the others—­and more impatient. It scuds across the sky’s vast canopy toward its destination. Once there, it slows to a halt and floats suspended thousands of feet above a majestic building adorned with cedar columns, pillared porticos and monumental statues. This is the North Palace, where the king resides in all his might and glory. The mass of condensed vapor settles over the imperial residence, casting a shadow. For, unlike humans, water has no regard for social status or royal titles.

Dangling from the edge of the storm cloud is a single drop of rain—­no bigger than a bean and lighter than a chickpea. For a while it quivers precariously—­small, spherical and scared. How frightening it is to observe the earth below opening like a lonely lotus flower. Not that this will be the first time: it has made the journey before—­ascending to the sky, descending to terra firma and rising heavenwards again—­and yet it still finds the fall terrifying.

Remember that drop, inconsequential though it may be compared with the magnitude of the universe. Inside its miniature orb, it holds the secret of infinity, a story uniquely its own. When it finally musters the courage, it leaps into the ether. It is falling now—­fast, faster. Gravity always helps. From a height of 3,080 feet it races down. Only three minutes until it reaches the ground.

*

Down below in Nineveh, the king walks through a double door and steps on to the terrace. Craning his head over the ornamented balustrade, he gazes at the opulence of the city, which spreads out before him as far as the eye can see. Manicured estates, splendid aqueducts, imposing temples, thriving orchards, charming public parks, verdant fields and a royal menagerie where gazelles, deer, ostriches, leopards, lynxes and lions are kept. The sight fills him with pride. He is particularly fond of the gardens, which are brimming with blooming trees and aromatic plants—­almond, date, ebony, fir, fig, medlar, mulberry, olive, pear, plum, pomegranate, poplar, quince, rosewood, tamarisk, terebinth, walnut, willow . . . He does not just rule over the land and its people, but also the streams and their tributaries. Directing the River Tigris through an intricate network of canals, weirs and dykes, storing water in cisterns and reservoirs, he and his forefathers have turned this region into a paradise.

The king’s name is Ashurbanipal. He has a well-­trimmed, curly beard, a broad sweep of a forehead over thick eyebrows and dark, roundly arched eyes lined with black kohl. He is attired in a pointed headdress studded with jewels that glow like distant stars each time the light strikes them. His robe, deep blue and woven of the finest linen, is embroidered with threads of gold and silver, and embellished with hundreds of shiny beads, gemstones and amulets. On his left wrist he wears a bracelet with a flower motif for good luck and protection. He reigns over an empire so immense that they hail him as “The Emperor of the Four Quarters of the World.” Someday he will also be remembered and renowned as “The Librarian King,” “The Educated Monarch,” “The Erudite Ruler of Mesopotamia”—­titles that will make people forget that, whilst he may have been highly learned and cultured, he was no less cruel than his predecessors.

Tilting his head to the side to scan the cityscape, Ashurbanipal inhales. He does not immediately notice the storm brewing in the distance. The delightful fragrance emanating from the gardens and groves absorbs him. Slowly, he raises his eyes toward the leaden sky. A shiver passes through his sturdy frame, and his thoughts are ambushed by stark warnings and somber portents. Some soothsayers have predicted that Nineveh is fated to be attacked, sacked and burned to the ground, even its stones borne away. This magnificent city will be wiped off the face of the earth, they said, and beseeched everyone to leave. The king has made sure these doom-­mongers were silenced, ordering that their lips be sealed shut and sewn with catgut. But now a sense of foreboding tugs at his insides, like the pull of a river’s undercurrent. What if the prophecies were to come true?

Ashurbanipal shakes off the ominous feeling. Although he has enemies aplenty, including his own flesh-­and-­blood brother, there is no reason to worry. Nothing can destroy this glorious capital so long as the gods are on their side, and he has no doubt that the gods, however capricious and inconsistent in their dealings with mortals, will always come to Nineveh’s defense.

Meanwhile, the raindrop is about to arrive on earth. As it gets closer to the ground, for an instant, it feels so free and weightless it could almost alight anywhere it pleases. To its left is a tall, branchless tree—­a date palm—­whose fronds would make a lovely landing place. To its right is an irrigation canal running through a farmer’s field, where it would be welcome, helping this year’s harvest grow. It could also come to rest on the stairs of a nearby ziggurat dedicated to Ishtar—­the deity of love, sex, beauty, passion and war as well as thunderstorms. That would be an apt destination. Dithering, the droplet has still not resolved where to fall, but that does not matter, for the wind will decide in its stead. A sudden gust lifts and carries its tiny mass straight toward the man standing on a terrace nearby.

A heartbeat later, the king feels something wet plop on to his scalp and nestle in his hair. Annoyed, he...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Knopf Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593801717
• ISBN 13: 9780593801710
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 443
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland