Around 40 millimetres of rain poured down on Mantova on Thursday 5 September. Two days after the heavy rain, and with more precipitation predicted for the following day, the atmosphere is anything but damp as the audience in Mantova's Piazza Castello welcomes Turkish author Elif Shafak. Extreme precipitation and flash floods in some parts of the world obscure freshwater scarcity in others: with seven out of ten water-stressed countries located in the Middle East and North Africa, water is an important topic for Shafak. The author describes her identity as plural, fluid, and water-like. She is at home in England and at home when using the English language, but there are elements of the Middle East in her soul. “Water is the connecting force of our lives,” she tells the crowd.

During Italian writer and critic Olga Campofreda’s conversation with Shafak, interpreted by Marina Astrologo, the questions and answers flow gently, but with powerful implications. Shafak’s new novel, There Are Rivers in the Sky, crosses time and space to bring together three different characters – all connected by a single drop of water. Shafak does not shy away from the heavy topics: institutional colonial history, gender violence, international politics, and democracy. For her, literature is a platform to discuss urgent issues, but with calmness and wisdom.

Shafak speaks about the prosecution of her previous novel, resulting in her lawyer being made to defend a fictional character in court, "a Kafkaesque situation". Some of her later novels have been targeted for ‘crimes of obscenity’, a concerning development which sees works of fiction prosecuted rather than improving women’s rights, Shafak remarks sadly.

Despite these unsettling experiences and the complexity of living in exile, Shafak remains fiercely committed to literature as a place where water and people can flow freely and equally across time and space.