The self-exiled British writer of of Turkish origin who authored The island of Missing Trees, which I greatly enjoyed, is back with this deeply researched historical novel about the longstanding persecution of the Yizidis of northern Iraq, Iran, and southern Turkey.
Single raindrops are endowed with emotions, purpose, planning, and memory, and she somehow makes this seem entirely normal. By halfway through the book she has almost convinced me that it is a reasonable scientific hypothesis.
Synesthesia rears it’s head, although not so named: one character smells certain words.
The cholera epidemic of 1864 and the role of water from the Broad Street pump is recounted in detail, as in The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson, with Dr. John Snow as the hero.
I can relate to the publishing house woes of Charles Dickens that are detailed; the author’s racist views of society and his love affair are also recounted.
The Gilgamesh poem and the ancient city of Nineva feature prominently throughout the book. There are only three main characters; an 1850-76 precocious slum boy with a special talent, a young modern Yazidi girl whose baptism in the Tigris River is interupted by development, and a modern female hydrologist in London, each with a complex background, and very different agendas.
Numerous mythologies and tales of the Mesopotamian diverse population pervade the narrative, as does the brutal genocidal destruction of the Yasidi population by the ISIS Caliphate.
The trafficking of organ donors was apparently a real practice in that troubled part of the world, even recently.
I risk sounding petty, but forehead veins do not pulsate in sorrow.
A few quotes to give you a flavour of the book:
«Water hardens in adverse circumstances, not unlike the human heart. »
«The doctor, his face barnacled with moles »
«It is an odd thing to lose faith in the beliefs you once held firmly. How strange it is to have carried your convictions like a set of keys, only to realize that they won’t open any doors. »
This is a beautiful, evocative, superbly written historical novel that I greatly enjoyed.
4.8/5
Thanks, Jean.
The Passionate Reader 
4.8? I thought the options were 4 or 5, no 0.1 increments:)
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