Three protagonists linked by two rivers, the water cycle and a lost culture make for an intriguing yet complex narrative structure. Shafak challenges her readers to contemplate how water, a tiny but vital molecule, travels through time and space without regard for human endeavors. Along the way, she links water to larger issues like racism (class and ethnic cleansing), memory (lost ancient Middle Eastern artifacts and literature), and climate change (hidden and polluted urban rivers and the cultural impact of damming to contend with desertification).

King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums is a 19th century boy born into poverty beside a polluted Thames River. He is named by the people who made their living retrieving artifacts discarded into the river. This occupation foreshadows Arthur’s future because, not unlike the Dickens characters he resembles, he has “great expectations.” He is a brilliant introvert who rises from grinding poverty to discover a calling excavating and translating cuneiform tablet shards from the destroyed city if Nineveh. Recovering an ancient poem— “Epic of Gilgamesh”— becomes his fatal obsession. That text was lost when the Mesopotamian library of King Ashurbanipal was flooded.

The second story is about a Yazidi girl named Narin. In some respects, this is the opaquest of the three stories. The traditions, history, and homelands of this obscure Kurdish sect are central to this story, yet it leaves much detail out. It is understandable that this long book required some editing, but it is unfortunate to have to resort to Google to follow it. Simply put, Narin’s mother is dead, and her father is away a lot as a travelling musician. Her religious grandmother is her primary caregiver. Narin is suffering from progressive deafness and her grandmother is intent of getting her baptized on sacred ground. Dam building on the Tigris leads to the flooding of their homeland. This necessitates travel to a distant sacred site that is hostile to the Yazidi people. This results in unfortunate consequences for Narin and her family.

Zaleekhah is a young hydrological scientist renting a houseboat on the newly restored Thames. Suffering from depression because of the breakup of her marriage, she develops a romantic relationship with her female landlord, who is a tattoo artist working in cuneiform decorations. This coincidence seems to be a stretch to link the three stories. In another case of heavy-handed foreshadowing, one also learns that Zaleekhah’s parents died in an Egyptian flash flood. She was raised in luxury by a loving, but meddling uncle. Her niece requires a kidney transplant— reminiscent of Narin’s deafness—an event that leads to dire consequences for her relationship with her uncle.

Shafak merges these three plots in a satisfying, yet unsurprising conclusion. Notwithstanding a few places where she may have hammered the puzzle pieces to make the stories fit better, this is a well-researched and engaging piece of historical fiction filled with obscure facts and a cast of realistic, nuanced characters. ( )