There Are Rivers in the Sky

by Elif Shafak

The stories and silences of Mesopotamia—current-day Iraq and parts of current-day Turkey, Iran, Syria and Kuwait—are shaped by rivers, past and present, dead and dying.

The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh.

I Am Ashurbanipal: King of the World,

Winged Bull: The Extraordinary Life of Henry Layard, the Adventurer Who Discovered the Lost City of Nineveh

The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia.

The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic—and

French immunologist Jacques Benveniste, who developed the theory of “water memory” at the cost of his career and professional reputation.

Elixir: A Human History of Water by Brian Fagan; Blue Machine: How the Ocean Shapes Our World by Helen Czerski; When the Rivers Run Dry by Fred Pearce; How to Read Water: Clues and Patterns from Puddles to the Sea by Tristan Gooley; and The Flow: Rivers, Water and Wildness

The debate on museums and who owns cultural heritage is a complicated one, and there is no better space than literature, especially the novel as a literary genre, within which to freely explore the most complex issues of our time with nuance, depth, care and empathy.

The Museum Makers: A Journey Backwards—from Old Boxes of Dark Family Secrets to a Golden Era of Museums by Rachel Morris explores the human instinct for collection.

The Religion of the Peacock Angel: The Yezidis and Their Spirit World

I want to emphasize the meticulous investigations of the Yazidi Justice Committee (YJC). The comment in my novel by my fictional character Salma about her wish to have been gassed at Halabja rather than being captured and raped by ISIS is taken from the words of a survivor.

The Girl Who Beat ISIS;

The Beekeeper of Sinjar: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq;

This novel is my love song to rivers—those still living and those that are long gone.