Elif Shafak is a bestselling author, a renowned women’s rights activist, a columnist and a political commentator. Her previous novel, THE ISLAND OF MISSING TREES, was a Reese’s Book Club pick, and she has been a finalist for the highly respected Booker Prize. But each of her works treads new ground; she is a truly distinguished yeoman of modern literature.

THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY transcends our timeline, skirting back and forth between generations and quoting the Epic of Gilgamesh to tell a story set on two different rivers. On the waves of the Thames and the Tigris, four remarkable tales unfold, reflecting both the secrets of the past and the truth about the present. They are epic in every way.

The novel begins with a Mesopotamian vista and a rainstorm falling on a powerful leader who is enacting a revenge that will end his life instead of ending a betrayal. Those raindrops take us into a growing Thames, a Victorian-era boy named Arthur and the genius discoveries he will find on the banks of the Tigris. In today’s Turkey, a young deaf girl wishes to travel to the River Tigris in the company of her grandmother; they seek to claim their heritage before any more time passes by.

"THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY makes an impressive notch in the belt of an author for whom the unknown has never been something to fear."

Then the plot moves on to London, circa now, where a studier of water falls out of her marriage and into a houseboat where her Victorian counterpart, Arthur, spent his boyhood discovering the wonders of nature along the mighty Thames.

THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY takes us on a fast and furious race among cultures --- eras and circumstances that shape and reshape the history of the world, in much the same way that waters ebb and tide, and fashion and refashion the natural world. Shafak’s poetic, lyrical writing style makes each character come alive, their need to capture something about their time frantic in the face of the shifting issues of civilization. It is worthy of comparison to the Epic of Gilgamesh in its scope and exploration of morality.

Shafak also intersects her characters with famed iconoclasts from the past, including a Victorian-era Dickens. This is a history lesson like no other. And then the book follows Arthur on a Victorian intellectual spree, in which he begins reading the 18th- and 19th-century philosophers, novelists and essayists. There are so many facts and specifics concerning military history --- for example, about the Kurds and their complex history --- that a reader might be worried about keeping up. After all, there is so much time-jumping and character-hopping, yet Shafak’s remarkable talent leaps and bounds with the elasticity and expressiveness that makes the book a truly energetic and illuminating read.

At one point, Shafak lets a character named Nen quote from the Epic of Gilgamesh and sum up her own novel: “That’s how Gilgamesh’s mother complains to the gods: ‘Why did you endow my son Gilgamesh with a restless heart? You have moved him to travel… face a battle unknown…’” This is exactly what the novel does to us. It makes us enjoy the traveling between times so much that we fall in love with these characters and follow them into the unknown with breath held and eyes wide open.

THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY makes an impressive notch in the belt of an author for whom the unknown has never been something to fear. Elif Shafak is perhaps the most important novelist to put on any TBR list. Every reader will fall prey to her distinctive blend of fantasy and reality.