Explore the real-world places that appear in There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak. Each location on the map shows what happens there in the novel, the real history of the place, and what's there today. Featured locations include River Thames at Limehouse Reach, Limehouse and the East End Slums, The Grapes Pub, Victorian Publishing House District, Paternoster Row, The British Museum and 7 more.
East London riverbank — Arthur's birthplace by the stinking river
Arthur Smith is born in 1840 in a squalid dwelling beside the sewage-choked Thames, with a drop of filthy river water falling on his forehead at birth. His father Jack, a drunken and abusive man, and his mentally troubled mother Dot shape a childhood of poverty and fear. The river's stench and tides run through his earliest memories and his bond with water.
In the 1840s the Thames served as an open sewer for a rapidly growing London, leading to cholera outbreaks and the Great Stink of 1858. Limehouse and neighboring districts were crowded with docks, laborers, and poor housing.
Limehouse Basin and the nearby Thames Path are now a mix of marinas, modern flats, and riverside walks. Walkers can follow the Thames Path along the river here.
Visit: Thames Path at Limehouse (park)
Narrow lanes near the docks — Arthur's impoverished childhood
Arthur grows up in the crowded, grimy streets of the East End where his father drinks away wages and beats the family. Hungry and often alone, he clings to his extraordinary memory, which lets him recall every word he reads or hears. These streets are the backdrop from which his gift lifts him toward a very different life.
Limehouse was a dockside district of cramped tenements, lodging houses, and sailors' haunts in the Victorian era. Poverty, disease, and overcrowding were widespread before later reforms and slum clearance.
The area has been largely redeveloped with canal-side housing, offices, and restaurants, though some historic buildings and pubs survive. It is a residential and commercial district rather than a single attraction.
76 Narrow Street, Limehouse — Riverside pub of Victorian London
The riverside taverns of the East End form part of the world of Arthur's father and the working men who drink away their wages near the docks. Such rough, smoky pubs frame the cruelty and instability Arthur endures at home, and the Thames laps just outside their doors.
The Grapes dates to about 1720 and is one of London's oldest riverside pubs, associated with Charles Dickens, who is thought to have used it as a model for the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters in Our Mutual Friend.
The Grapes remains a working pub and restaurant serving food and drink on Narrow Street, with a small balcony overlooking the Thames.
Visit: The Grapes (restaurant)
Near St Paul's — Arthur's apprenticeship in the book trade
Arthur's prodigious memory wins him an apprenticeship at a leading publisher, taking him from the slums into a world of print, paper, and ideas. Among the books passing through his hands is Austen Henry Layard's Nineveh and Its Remains, which captivates him and sets him on a lifelong obsession with Mesopotamia and Gilgamesh.
Paternoster Row beside St Paul's Cathedral was the center of London's book trade from the 18th century until it was destroyed in the Blitz in December 1940. Many leading publishers and booksellers had premises there.
The area is now Paternoster Square, a pedestrian plaza of offices and cafes next to St Paul's Cathedral, with the Paternoster Column at its center. A small plaque and the surrounding streets recall the area's bookselling heritage.
Visit: Paternoster Square (landmark)
Great Russell Street — Assyrian treasures from Nineveh
The museum holds the Assyrian reliefs and clay tablets unearthed at Nineveh, including the tablets bearing the Epic of Gilgamesh. Arthur, driven by his fascination with Layard's discoveries and the poem, comes to study the fragments and the work of those who decipher them, tying his life to the lost library of Ashurbanipal.
The British Museum received thousands of cuneiform tablets from Nineveh's royal library in the 1850s, excavated by Layard, Hormuzd Rassam, and others. In 1872 George Smith, working on those tablets, announced the Babylonian flood story from the Gilgamesh epic.
The museum is free to enter and displays Assyrian palace reliefs, including the lion hunt scenes of Ashurbanipal. The tablets themselves are held in the collection, with selected pieces on display.
Visit: The British Museum (museum)
Chelsea Embankment — Zaleekah's refuge on the Thames in 2018
Newly divorced hydrologist Zaleekah moves onto a houseboat on the Thames to escape her husband and her old life. Orphaned and raised by her wealthy uncle, she has resolved to end her life in one month. On the water she finds an old book about her homeland, which draws her toward Gilgamesh and the story of rivers that changes her course.
Houseboats have been moored along the Chelsea and Battersea reaches of the Thames since the early 20th century, and the Chelsea Embankment was built in the 1870s by Joseph Bazalgette. The moorings form a small floating community with a long bohemian tradition.
Houseboats are still moored along the Chelsea Embankment and Cheyne Walk, and the riverside is open to walkers. The houseboats themselves are private homes and not open to visitors.
Riverside promenade — Zaleekah's views of the tidal Thames
Zaleekah studies water as a hydrologist, and she watches the tide, the mud, and the flow of the Thames with a professional and personal eye. The river's history, from Arthur's polluted era to the present, echoes through her thoughts as she reads about the Tigris and its lost world.
The Chelsea Embankment was built between 1871 and 1874 as part of Bazalgette's engineering works, which also created London's modern sewer system. The project reclaimed land from the river and sealed the sewage that had polluted the Thames.
It is a tree-lined public riverside road and promenade with views toward Albert Bridge and Battersea Park. It is popular for walking and is a gateway to Cheyne Walk and the Chelsea Physic Garden.
Visit: Chelsea Embankment (landmark)
Belvedere, Bexley — Bazalgette's sewer engineering
The novel's concern with the Thames as a polluted, life-giving river is tied to the Victorian effort to cleanse it. Arthur's era witnesses the stench and disease of the river, and Zaleekah's expertise as a hydrologist links the engineered waterways of London to the ancient irrigation systems of Mesopotamia.
Crossness Pumping Station opened in 1865 as part of Joseph Bazalgette's intercepting sewer system, built after the Great Stink of 1858. Its Victorian beam engines and ornate ironwork are among the finest examples of industrial architecture of the period.
The site is run as a museum by the Crossness Engines Trust, with restored beam engines and guided tours on open days.
Visit: Crossness Engines (museum)
Richmond — Botanical Victorian science and exploration
Gardens, rivers, and the natural world thread through the novel's concern with water and growth, as Zaleekah and the other characters reflect on the living systems that sustain cities. Kew represents the Victorian passion for collection and exploration that also brought Mesopotamian antiquities to London.
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, grew from royal estates in the 18th century and became a leading botanical research institution in the Victorian era. It received a World Heritage designation in 2003.
Kew Gardens is a major public garden and research center with glasshouses, tree-top walkways, and landscaped grounds beside the Thames.
Visit: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (park)
East bank of the Tigris — Ashurbanipal's great library
The novel opens with King Ashurbanipal of Assyria, learned yet ruthless, building his great library at Nineveh on the Tigris, gathering tablets that include the Epic of Gilgamesh. After his reign the library crumbles, but the poem survives in the ruins and links Arthur, Narin, and Zaleekah across centuries through two rivers.
Nineveh was the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire under Sennacherib and Ashurbanipal in the 7th century BCE. It fell in 612 BCE to a Babylonian and Median coalition, and its library tablets were excavated from the 1840s onward.
The ruins lie within modern Mosul, Iraq, including the mounds of Kuyunjik and Nebi Yunus. The site was damaged by ISIS in 2014-2015, including the destruction of the Mashki Gate and parts of the walls, and restoration and archaeological work have since been undertaken.
Near Shekhan, Iraqi Kurdistan — Sacred Yazidi valley
Narin's grandmother Besna is determined to take ten-year-old Narin to Lalish for baptism in the sacred spring before the girl's hearing is lost. With ISIS rising and the family's Tigris homeland threatened in 2014, the journey becomes a race against time and violence, bound up with Yazidi faith, water, and memory.
Lalish is the holiest site of the Yazidi religion and the burial place of Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir, a 12th-century figure revered by Yazidis. The valley contains temples, shrines, and a sacred spring and has been a pilgrimage destination for centuries.
Lalish remains an active place of Yazidi worship and pilgrimage in Iraqi Kurdistan, and visitors are admitted with respect for religious customs, such as removing shoes. Access depends on regional security and local conditions.
Visit: Lalish Temple (historic site)
Southeastern Turkey — Tigris homelands and Narin's family
Narin's family lives along the Tigris in the borderlands of Turkey and Iraq, where the river carries their history and their stories. The destruction of ancestral lands and the displacement caused by ISIS and by dams and conflict force them from their home, while the river runs as a constant thread to Gilgamesh and to London's Thames.
Hasankeyf was an ancient town on the Tigris with some 12,000 years of settlement, flooded in 2020 after the Ilısu Dam was completed. Many monuments were relocated to a cultural park nearby.
The old town of Hasankeyf is largely submerged, and a new Hasankeyf has been built nearby, with relocated monuments such as the Zeynel Bey tomb in an open-air cultural park. Visitors can see the relocated monuments and the reservoir.
Visit: Hasankeyf Archaeopark (park)
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