
There Are Rivers in the Sky
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Olivia Vinall
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Elif Shafak
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By:
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Elif Shafak
About this listen
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.”
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Critic reviews
"An odyssey, an epic, a lament, and a tale of redemption, There Are Rivers in the Sky is a clarion call to honor the elemental forces that shape our memories, our histories, and our world. In short, a masterpiece."—Ruth Ozeki, author of The Book of Form and Emptiness
"Flows like rivers from ancient Nineveh to present-day London with characters of the distant past as bright and vivid as those of today.” —Philippa Gregory, author of The Other Boleyn Girl
“Walt Whitman said that a blade of grass contains the journey work of stars. William Blake wrote that we can see the world in a grain of sand. Toni Morrison said that we never shape the world, but the world shapes us. And so Shafak finds the world in a drop of water. She discovers the epic in the tiny, the global in the local, the love in the loss, the history in the momentary. An extraordinary novel, fresh and cleansing, like the rain bouncing off the metal roof of our lives.” —Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin and Aperignon
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By: Elif Shafak
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Three Daughters of Eve
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Alix Dunmore
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Set across Istanbul and Oxford, from the 1980s to the present day, Three Daughters of Eve is a sweeping tale of faith and friendship, tradition and modernity, love and an unexpected betrayal. Peri, a wealthy Turkish housewife and mother, is on her way to a dinner party at a seaside mansion in Istanbul when a beggar snatches her handbag. As she wrestles to get it back, a photograph falls to the ground - an old polaroid of three young women and their university professor.
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Review 3 daughters of Eve
- By CA on 04-28-18
By: Elif Shafak
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Honor
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marno, Piter Marik
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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An honor killing shatters and transforms the lives of Turkish immigrants in 1970s London. Internationally best-selling Turkish author Elif Shafak’s new novel is a dramatic tale of families, love, and misunderstandings that follows the destinies of twin sisters born in a Kurdish village. While Jamila stays to become a midwife, Pembe follows her Turkish husband, Adem, to London, where they hope to make new lives for themselves and their children. In London, they face a choice: stay loyal to the old traditions or try their best to fit in.
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Complex but Compelling
- By Cariola on 04-14-13
By: Elif Shafak
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The Forty Rules of Love
- A Novel of Rumi
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 11 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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In this follow-up to her acclaimed 2007 novel The Bastard of Istanbul, Turkish author Elif Shafak unfolds two tantalizing parallel narratives---one contemporary and the other set in the 13th century, when Rumi encountered his spiritual mentor, the whirling dervish known as Shams of Tabriz---that together incarnate the poet's timeless message of love.
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Horrible reader
- By HI on 07-05-19
By: Elif Shafak
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Where the Heart Should Be
- By: Sarah Crossan
- Narrated by: Sophie Jo Wasson
- Length: 3 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Ireland is starving, and a poor Irish scullery maid falls in love with the British heir to the land. Can their romance stay hidden during the devastating famine? The potatoes are black, people are dying, and in the midst of it all, Nell must do everything she can to keep her family together and everyone she loves alive.
By: Sarah Crossan
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Beach Music
- A Novel
- By: Pat Conroy
- Narrated by: Jonathan Marosz
- Length: 26 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Pat Conroy is without doubt America's favorite storyteller, a writer who portrays the anguished truth of the human heart and the painful secrets of families in richly lyrical prose and unforgettable narratives. Now, in Beach Music, he tells of the dark memories that haunt generations, in a story that spans South Carolina and Rome and reaches back into the unutterable terrors of the Holocaust.
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Memorable
- By Ella on 03-14-10
By: Pat Conroy
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The Beekeeper of Aleppo
- A Novel
- By: Christy Lefteri
- Narrated by: Art Malik
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Nuri is a beekeeper and Afra, his wife, is an artist. Mornings, Nuri rises early to hear the call to prayer before driving to his hives in the countryside. On weekends, Afra sells her colorful landscape paintings at the open-air market. They live a simple life, rich in family and friends, in the hills of the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo - until the unthinkable happens. When all they love is destroyed by war, Nuri knows they have no choice except to leave their home. But escaping Syria will be no easy task: Afra has lost her sight.
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Just TOO AWFULLY DEPRESSING WITHOUT ending with any hope
- By Abby Mamacos on 07-28-20
By: Christy Lefteri
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The Red Tent
- By: Anita Diamant
- Narrated by: Carol Bilger
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Passionate, earthy, deeply affecting, The Red Tent combines rich storytelling with a valuable contribution to modern fiction: a vibrant new perspective of female life in the age that shaped present day civilization and values.
If you like The Red Tent, try The Harlot by the Side of the Road, a recounting of some of the most startling and explicit writings from The Old Testament.
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The key word is 'fiction'
- By R. S. Herron on 03-03-09
By: Anita Diamant
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A Thousand Times Before
- A Novel
- By: Asha Thanki
- Narrated by: Priya Ayyar
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Ayukta is finally sitting down with her wife Nadya to respond to a question she’s long avoided: Should they have a child? The decision is complicated by a secret her family has kept for centuries, one that Ayukta will be the first to share with someone outside their bloodline: the women in her family inherit a mysterious tapestry, through which each generation can experience the memories of those who came before her. Ayukta invites Nadya into this lineage, carrying her through its past.
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The performance was an unpleasant listen for me.
- By Ms. Esq. on 03-10-25
By: Asha Thanki
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The Collected Regrets of Clover
- A Novel
- By: Mikki Brammer
- Narrated by: Jennifer Pickens
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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From the day she watched her kindergarten teacher drop dead during a dramatic telling of Peter Rabbit, Clover Brooks has felt a stronger connection with the dying than she has with the living. After the beloved grandfather who raised her dies alone while she is traveling, Clover becomes a death doula in New York City, dedicating her life to ushering people peacefully through their end-of-life process. Clover spends so much time with the dying that she has no life of her own, until the final wishes of a feisty old woman send Clover on a trip across the country to uncover a forgotten love story.
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We are all dying, but living is the key
- By C. Heness on 06-12-23
By: Mikki Brammer
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Miracle in the Andes
- 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home
- By: Nando Parrado, Vince Rause
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Nando Parrado was unconscious for three days before he woke to discover that the plane carrying his rugby team to Chile had crashed deep in the Andes, killing many of his teammates, his mother, and his sister. Stranded with the few remaining survivors on a lifeless glacier and thinking constantly of his father’s grief, Parrado resolved that he could not simply wait to die. So Parrado, an ordinary young man with no particular disposition for leadership or heroism, led an expedition up the treacherous slopes of a snowcapped mountain and across forty-five miles of frozen wilderness.
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A Must Listen
- By KevinH on 01-10-08
By: Nando Parrado, and others
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Room
- A Novel
- By: Emma Donoghue
- Narrated by: Michal Friedman, Ellen Archer, Robert Petkoff, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits. Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it's not enough...not for her or for him.
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Good book... Buy it in print
- By Caitland on 12-18-10
By: Emma Donoghue
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Costanza
- By: Rachel Blackmore
- Narrated by: Esther Wane
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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In the scorched city of Rome, the cobbled streets hum with gossip and sin. Costanza Piccolomini is a respectable young wife - until she meets Gianlorenzo Bernini, the famed sculptor and star of Roman society, whose jet-black gaze matches his dark temper. From the second they set eyes upon each other, a fatal attraction is born. Their secret love burns with a passion that consumes them. But with every stolen kiss and illicit tryst, Costanza's reputation is at stake. Meanwhile, Bernini has a dangerous desire: he wants to make Costanza immortal.
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Overall story was so interesting to listen to.
- By Gill Gregory on 10-31-24
By: Rachel Blackmore
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Horse
- A Novel
- By: Geraldine Brooks
- Narrated by: James Fouhey, Lisa Flanagan, Graham Halstead, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack.
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Love Geraldine Brooks
- By Regina on 06-25-22
By: Geraldine Brooks
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The Lion Women of Tehran
- By: Marjan Kamali
- Narrated by: Mozhan Navabi, Nikki Massoud
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing Ellie and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Lonely and bearing the brunt of her mother’s endless grievances, Ellie dreams of a friend to alleviate her isolation. Luckily, on the first day of school, she meets Homa, a kind, passionate girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, the two girls play games, learn to cook in the stone kitchen of Homa’s warm home, wander through the colorful stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions for becoming “lion women.”
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Wonderful story Awful Narration
- By Sogol on 08-14-24
By: Marjan Kamali
What listeners say about There Are Rivers in the Sky
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- Nora Martos-Perry
- 02-26-25
Masterful
Lyrical, historically accurate, painstakingly researched, beautifully narrated. One of my favorite books in the last five years
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- Marcia Wasser
- 03-14-25
Heavy but beautiful
Human stories moving and compelling. The first chapters were hard to get into but I enjoyed more and more as book went on
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- DEBBIE
- 04-18-25
Every single thing
It open my eyes to so much suffering to women. I loved this book, it’s amazing
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- L. Hartje
- 09-18-24
Beautiful story telling
Follow a drop of water through time and people. I couldn’t stop listening! And I already want to listen again. It’s one of those books that you never want to end
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- Anonymous User
- 10-01-24
Story of water
An outstanding book with brilliant narration! I was captivated by how the author seamlessly blends historical details into a story that’s both heartbreaking and beautiful. I highly recommend it.
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- Cin
- 11-08-24
Very Memorable Characters
This was an excellent recounting of a unique story. I was entranced by the tales of King Arthur. Narin, and Zaleekah, and the water that interconnects their fates. I was not familiar with this author before, but plan to enjoy more of her books.
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- Carrie Shinn
- 12-16-24
The stunning historical research makes the story
It’s just a beautiful story told with fascinating historical detail. I highly recommend this book.
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- Danielle
- 01-16-25
Stunning!
What can I say? I loved everything from the beautiful characters, nods to history, and the Yazoo culture to the lyrical writing and phenomenal narration. I think this book is to be added to my favorites list! I didn’t want it to end!
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- warren
- 02-01-25
Epic Historical Fiction Novel
Incredibly descriptive lyrical, writing telling a captivating tragic story going back to the early days of Mesopotamia and coming up to the modern times. So much information was new and intriguing and encouraged me to investigate and learn more about the poems of Gilgamesh and the.Yazidis people -
It’s a powerful story that I believe needs to be told
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- OnlyTruth
- 03-01-25
Fantastic book and beautifully red
I will admit, I am already a fan of this Author, but this was one of her best and the reader was incredible
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