9 Of The Best Books Like There Are Rivers In The Sky By Elif Shafak

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“Books, like paper lanterns, provide us with a light amidst the fog.”

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Elif Shafak’s There Are Rivers in the Sky left readers spellbound throughout its ambitious scope, weaving centuries of human history, ancient memory, and lost artefacts around the eternal life of water. Spanning from ancient Nineveh to Victorian London and the modern Thames, it is a poignant demonstration of atmospheric, multi-threaded storytelling. If you are chasing the same rare literary high, you’re probably searching for novels with similar intricate, tied timelines, rich historical research, and profound meditations on how human lives intersect across time. Whether you are craving sprawling multi-generational epics, lyrical prose about forgotten heritage, or stories bound together by a single lingering element, you’ve come to the right place. Here are some of our favourite books like There Are Rivers in the Sky, to add to your reading list! 

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There Are Rivers In The Sky Summary

There Are Rivers in the Sky follows three interconnected lives across time, all of them tethered together by two ancient rivers – the Tigris and the Thames – and a single droplet of water. 

In nineteenth-century Victorian London, Arthur – born on the banks of the Thames and into a life of poverty in the city’s slums – possesses a miraculous memory. It’s a talent that leads him to the secrets of ancient Nineveh and the British Museum. In 20114, a young Yazidi girl living along the mighty Tigris in Iraq faces the unimaginable terror and devastation of the ISIS genocide. Finally, in 2018, London, Zaleekhah, a recently divorced hydrologist living on a houseboat on the Thames, looks for a fresh start whilst grappling with her own deep emotional paralysis. 

Cloud Cuckoo Land – Anthony Doerr

First up on our list of books like There Are Rivers in the Sky is Anthony Doerr’s acclaimed bestseller, Cloud Cuckoo Land. How do we weather the end of things? This ambitious tale brings together an unforgettable cast of dreamers and outsiders from Constantinople in the past, Idaho in the present, and somewhere far-flung in the future to offer a vision of survival against all the odds. 

Bound together by a single ancient text like Shafak’s work, these tales interweave to form a tapestry of solace and resilience, and are a celebration of storytelling itself. Like There Are Rivers in the Sky, it is a story of hope and of profound human connection. 

The Covenant Of Water – Abraham Verghese

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning – and in Kerala, water is everywhere. 

A simmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the hardships undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. Infused with humour, heart, and the essence of life, it is one of the best books to read after There Are Rivers in the Sky. 

The Master And Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov

One hot spring, the devil arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a retinue that includes a beautiful naked witch and an immense talking black cat with a fondness for chess and vodka. The visitors quickly wreak havoc in a city that refuses to believe in either God or Satan. But they also bring two unhappy Muscovites: one is the Master, a writer pilloried for daring to write a novel about Christ and Pontius Pilate; the other is Margarita, who loves the Master so deeply that she is willing to go to hell for him. 

What ensues is one of the all-time classic works of Russian literature brimming with inexhaustible energy, humour, and philosophical depth, whose vision of Soviet life in the 1930s was so ferociously accurate it could not be published during author Mikhail Bulgavok’s lifetime. 

The Old Drift – Namwali Serpell

On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there was once a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. Here begins the story of a small African nation, told by a swarm-like chorus that calls itself man’s greatest nemesis. In 1904, in a smoky room at a hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy. 

This sets off a cycle of unwitting retribution between three Zambian families as they collide and converge over the span of a century, into the present and beyond. As the generations pass, their lives – their triumphs, losses, and hopes – form a symphony about what it means to be human. 

Homegoing – Yaa Gyasi

Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle’s dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast’s booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. 

One thread of Homegoing follows Effia’s descendants through centuries of warfare in Ghana, as the Fante and Asante nations wrestle with the slave trade and British colonisation. The other follows Esi and her children in America. From the plantations of the South to the Civil War and the Great Migration, from the coal mines of Pratt City to the jazz clubs and dope houses of Harlem, right up through to the present day. 

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Check Out The Best Books Like Homegoing

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Go As A River – Shelley Read

Seventeen-year-old Victoria Nash runs the household on her family’s peach farm in the small ranch town of Iola, Colorado – the sole surviving female in a family of troubled men. Wilson Moon is a young drifter with a mysterious past, displaced from his tribal land and determined to live as he chooses. 

Victoria encounters Wil by chance on a street corner, a meeting that profoundly alters both of their young lives. When tragedy strikes, Victoria flees the only life she has ever known, retreating to the surrounding mountains with no clear notion of what the future holds. As the seasons change, she also charts the changes in herself, finding the strength to rebuild all that she has lost, even as the Gunnison River threatens to submerge her homeland. 

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My Name Is Red – Orhan Pamuk

The Sultan has commissioned a cadre of the most acclaimed artists in the land to create a great book celebrating the glories of his realm. Their task: to illuminate the work in the European style. But because figurative art can be deemed an affront to Islam, this commission is a dangerous proposition indeed. 

The ruling elite therefore must not know the full scope of the nature of the project, and panic erupts when one of the chosen miniaturists disappears. The only clue to the mystery lies in the half-finished illuminations themselves. Part fantasy and part philosophical puzzle, My Name is Red is a kaleidoscopic journey to the intersection of art, religion, love, sex, and power, perfect if you loved There Are Rivers in the Sky. 

The God Of Small Things – Arundhati Roy

The year is 1969. In the state of Kerala, a sky-blue Plymouth with chrome tailfins is stranded on the highway amid a Marxist workers’ demonstration. Inside the car sit two-egg twins, Rachel and Esthappen. Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, they fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family. 

When their English cousin, Sophie Mol, and her mother, Margaret Kochamma, arrive on a Christmas visit, Esthappen and Rachel learn that things can change in a day. Fuelled by big themes, this brilliantly plotted story uncoils with an agonising sense of foreboding and inevitability. Yet nothing prepares you for what lies at the heart of it. 

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Once Upon A River – Diane Settefield

On a dark midwinter’s night in an ancient inn on the River Thames, an extraordinary event occurs. The door bursts open on a grievously wounded stranger. In his arms is the lifeless body of a small child. Hours later, the girl stirs, takes a breath, and returns to life. Those who dwell on the river apply all their ingenuity to solving the puzzle of the girl who died and lived again, yet as the days pass, the mystery only deepens. 

Three families are keen to claim her. But the return of a lost child is not without complications, and no matter how heartbreaking the losses of the past are for those claimants, this girl cannot be everyone’s. Each family has mysteries of its own, and many secrets must be revealed before the girl’s identity can be known.