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After the Flood: There Are Rivers in the Sky, by Elif Shafak, reviewed

Water – essential to life and civilisation, but also a potentially destructive force – is the theme linking three disparate strands in Shafak’s magnificent new novel

3 August 2024

9:00 AM

3 August 2024

9:00 AM

There Are Rivers in the Sky Elif Shafak

Viking, pp.496, 18.99

A drop of water falls on the head of Ashur-banal, the erudite but merciless king of Assyria, as he walks through his capital, Nineveh. Having dissolved into the atmosphere, it reappears in 1840 as a snowflake that falls into the mouth of King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums, the fancifully named son of a mudlark, born on the banks of the Thames.

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