Get ready for another entertaining evening at the Fish Island Book Supper Club — July edition. Join us in Unlock to discuss There Are Rivers In the Sky by Elif Shafak over dinner. And this month we're trialling an optional non-fiction read-along with Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane.

A boy is born in the stinking mud of the Thames, into the kind of poverty that usually ends a life before it starts. But Arthur forgets nothing — a freak, flawless memory — and a single broken line of the oldest poem ever written will set the course of his whole life.

Shafak follows one drop of water across three lives and almost two centuries. Arthur, in Victorian London, decoding the Epic of Gilgamesh tablet by tablet. Narin, a nine-year-old Yazidi girl on the banks of the Tigris in 2014, as her world closes in around dam, drought and ISIS. Zaleekhah, a hydrologist on a Thames houseboat in 2018, trying to stay afloat after loss. One raindrop holds them together.

It's sweeping, tender and gloriously ambitious — Shafak at the full stretch of her storytelling. From the Booker-shortlisted author of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World.

An optional non-fiction read-along for those who like to read in pairs: Robert Macfarlane's Is a River Alive?, which asks — seriously — whether a river can be a living being, with a life, a death, even legal rights. He travels to a cloud-forest in Ecuador, the poisoned waters of Chennai, and a wild river in Quebec fighting off the dam-builders.

Rivers, memory, and what we owe the natural world — over dinner, beside the canal. Both Elif Shafak and Robert Macfarlane are firm favourites of Fish Island Books and we can't wait to share both these incredible books with you, and to hear what you think!

Your ticket includes:

A copy of There Are Rivers In the Sky by Elif Shafak (and option to purchase Is a River Alive?)
A pizza of your choice from the Classic Pizza menu
A glass of house wine or beer (or soft drink)
A small tiramisu

Book available for collection from Fish Island Books (in Unlock). Delivery possible — contact us at info@fishislandbooks.com

Contact the host of Fish Island Book Supper Club - July

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