There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak
This RCN book talk explores Elif Shafak’s There Are Rivers in the Sky through the themes of remembering and (in)justice, asking how water carries histories, identities, inequalities, and loss across time and place. It also invites participants to bring their own disciplinary perspectives and explore how the novel can help us think and connect through water.
Please join us on Teams on Thursday, 5 November at 14:00 CET for this hybrid event. All are welcome for this event: you do not have to read the book to join the talk!
We are very pleased to announce our second online book club event to generate and discuss collective reflections related to our respective interests and experiences in rivers. Each book talk will be led by a discussant, who will select a book and pose one or several questions related to the work in advance, and lead the conversation. Are you interested to be a discussant for a future RCN book club event? Please let us know at rcn@iias.nl. Please join us on Teams on Thursday, 5 November at 14:00 CET.
The talk
In this book discussion, we will rise to the refreshing challenge of reading and discussing a novel about water together as academics and practitioners. Elif Shafak’s There Are Rivers in the Sky connects the lives of characters across different places and centuries through water and the histories it carries.
Our discussion will focus on two themes inspired by the book: remembering and (in)justice.
- The book invites us to think about water not simply as a setting, but as a form of embodied memory. Rivers carry histories, rituals, identities, conflicts, and everyday life across time and place. What does it mean to think of water as something that remembers? What becomes visible when we follow a river through different lives and histories?
- The discussion will also consider the question of (in)justice. What can a river tell us about injustice and systemic violence? How are displacement, inequality, and loss written into water and into people’s relationships with it?
Beyond these questions, please feel free to bring in any theme or idea that caught your attention while reading. Let’s see whether this novel can also help us connect our different disciplines and perspectives through water.
The author
Elif Shafak is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist and storyteller. She has published 21 books, 13 of which are novels and her books have been translated into 58 languages. There are Rivers in the Sky won the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award 2025, Prix Fragonard de Littérature étrangère, and was a finalist for the Prix Fémina Étranger and The Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.
Shafak holds a PhD in political science and she has taught at various universities in Turkey, the US and the UK, including St Anne's College, Oxford University, where she is an honorary fellow. She also holds an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Bard College. Shafak is a Fellow and President of the Royal Society of Literature and has been chosen among BBC’s 100 most inspiring and influential women. She is a Public Humanities Fellow at the School of Advanced Studies (SAS) in recognition of her work to shape the future of Public Humanities, deepen its reach and expand its impact.
Text from Elif Safak's website.
The discussant
Bahar (Sakizlioglu) is an urban sociologist passionate about everyday (re)making of cities. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies, Erasmus University, The Netherlands. Her main research interests include feminist urbanism, caring cities, social reproduction, gentrification, displacement, housing justice, and comparative urbanism.
Header image: by Charly Darque on Unsplash.
