Elif Shafak is an award-winning British Turkish novelist whose work has been translated into fifty-five languages. The author of nineteen books, twelve of which are novels, she is a bestselling author in many countries around the world. Shafak's latest novel, The Island of Missing Trees, was a top ten Sunday Times bestseller, a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick and was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and the Women's Prize. Her previous novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the RSL Ondaatje Prize; longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award; and chosen as Blackwell's Book of the Year. She is a Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature. Shafak was awarded the Halld r Laxness International Literature Prize for her contribution to 'the renewal of the art of storytelling.'
Elif Shafak is a unique and powerful voice in world literature -- Ian McEwan Shafak makes a new home for us in words -- Colum McCann A writer of important, beautiful, painful, truthful novels -- Marian Keyes A brilliant, unforgettable novel, which raises big ideas of 'who owns the past' with nuance and complexity. Elif Shafak ties together diverse time periods and places in a way that seems both natural and wonderfully unexpected. -- Mary Beard Another mystical novel from Elif Shafak, in which time dissolves in the timeless water of two rivers and the characters who live beside them. The story flows like the rivers from ancient Nineveh to present-day London with characters of the distant past as bright and vivid as those of today. -- Philippa Gregory Make place for Elif Shafak on your bookshelf. Make place for her in your heart too. You won't regret it * Arundhati Roy * It will surprise no one that this is a brutal, elegant and incredible book. Amazing what Elif Shafak has done here - again! Magic. -- Evie Wyld An odyssey, an epic, a lament, and a tale of redemption, There are Rivers in the Sky is a clarion call to honor the elemental forces that shape our memories, our histories, and our world. In short, a masterpiece. -- Ruth Ozeki A book that is astonishing, ingenious and beautiful. A modern classic. Elif Shafak is one of the great writers of our time -- Peter Frankopan A deep and satisfying sweep of a story combining intellectual pleasures with a transformative empathy. Particular, universal, with head and with heart in perfect balance, this is surely a landmark novel. -- Laline Paull A great, sweeping, enthralling novel - Elif Shafak's narrative vision is as remarkable and astonishing as ever. Wonderful. -- Will Boyd Literature on a grand scale, mythic and timeless -- Nadifa Mohamed Elif Shafak approaches the world with grace, lyricism, and courage. Confronting societies riven by conflicts over gender, religion, sexuality, nationalism, memory, ideology, and more, Shafak wields the novel’s artistic power to cut through complacency and orthodoxy with ruthlessness and beauty. Her words and works—compelling and provocative—leave us in a space of light, a clearing from where we can see this world anew. -- Viet Thanh Nguyen From its bravura opening through to its final pages, There are Rivers in the Sky is a dazzling achievement. Shafak’s imagination is a wonder: bold, capacious, beautiful and wise. -- Katie Kitamura Elif Shafak's beautiful and moving new novel bears the reader along on its marvellous currents. Here, rivers twine with other rivers and lives with other lives across centuries and cultures, as the fate of a single drop of water weaves an intricate tapestry of love and loss -- Robert Macfarlane Intricate, exhilarating storytelling that is a poetic reminder of how connected we are to one another and to the past. -- Tracy Chevalier A great epic novel, as swift as a torrent, as deep as an ocean. Elif Shafak at the height of her powers, sweeping us off our feet. -- Leila Slimani