Read and discuss this dazzling story set in London and the Middle East, in the modern day and in Victorian England linked by the epic poem of Gilgamesh.
Highlights
- Join this book club and gain extra motivation to read in English
- 7 hours of live classes to help you develop fluent speaking in English
- Discuss storytelling, memory and erasure, hurt and healing, the past
- Be corrected by an expert English teacher to remove errors and mistakes
Practise and develop your English online in this 7 week advanced English book club course reading and discussing Elif Shafak's There are Rivers in the Sky. Each week you read some chapters, discuss them in class and improve specific areas of vocabulary or grammar while also examining literary aspects of the novel. Personalised feedback improves your grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation.
The Book Club book
Elif Shafak is a British Turkish novelist. There Are Rivers in the Sky is a rich, enchanting novel focusing on three characters, in three different times and places, all somehow touched by the Mesopotamian poem, The Epic of Gilgamesh. As well as a gripping story it is also a story of the preciousness of water - the characters live along the banks of the River Tigris and the River Thames in London.
In 1840 London, Arthur is born next to the unpleasant, polluted River Thames. Arthur has a remarkable memory, which will help him to escape poverty, by joining a book publishers. And one book sparks his interest: Nineveh and Its Remains.
In 2014 Turkey, Narin, a ten-year-old Yazidi girl, is going deaf. Consequently, her grandmother wants to travel to the family’s ancestral lands along the Tigris in Iraq to baptize her in a special temple. But how to cope to the rising presence of ISIS in the area?
In 2018 London, Zaleekah, a newly divorced hydrologist, escapes from her husband by moving into a houseboat on the Thames. Things are looking bleak for her, until a strange book about her homeland changes everything.
*****
WINNER OF THE GORDON BOWKER PRIZE 2025
WINNER OF THE INAUGURAL GOOD HOUSEKEEPING GOOD BOOKS SPRING COLLECTION
FINALIST FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION
‘Elif Shafak is a unique and powerful voice in world literature’ Ian McEwan
'Shafak makes a new home for us in words' Colum McCann
'One of the best writers in the world today' Hanif Kureishi
Geoff says:
"This is a remarkable piece of storytelling. It manages to combine and unify the different characters and places into a compelling story that helps us to reflect on great sweeps of history, while also underlining the preciousness and significance of water in our history and culture."
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| Age | 18+ |
| Class size | Maximum 8 participants |
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