Autumn 2025: The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

The following section is a conversation between Febe Tijsseling and Chloë Stol, discussing how Amal El-Mohtar’s first solo novella The River Has Roots takes a song about a girl murdering her sister and changes it into a fairy tale about two sisters loving each other beyond death. 

Do you think fairy tales need happy endings? 

It depends on how you define fairy tales. When talking about the modern fairy tale, it does need a happy ending. The idea of fairy tales has turned into something that is intrinsically connected to a happy ending. A fairy talewedding, for example, refers to a magically happy day. However, when looking at earlier fairy tales, they were often gruesome stories in which the ending consisted of the ‘villains’ being brutally punished. Take the example of Cinderella: the stepsisters are attacked by doves and shamed for having tried to cut off their toes in order to fit in Cinderella’s shoe to trick the prince into marrying them. Over the years, the endings to fairy tales have been altered to fit the conventions of what is deemed appropriate for a younger audience.  

Tale-tellers, like Disney, have influenced us to think of their ‘clean’ fairy tales with happy endings as THE fairy tales. Older versions with more gruesome details, on the other hand, are seen as ‘the originals’. But even those often had happy endings. Cinderella ends up marrying the prince after all and goes from a maid to a queen because of her shoe size. Sure, the tale may actively end with the stepsisters being blinded by doves, but we were never meant to root for the stepsisters to begin with. Cinderella, and the stepsisters for that matter, get what they ‘deserve’ “and they live happily ever after”. Even in contemporary literature, happy endings in novels may end up being ‘unrealistic’ or fairy tale-esque. Real life is not always happy and does not always end with a “happily ever after”: novels often reflect that. Perhaps a romance novel has a happy ending, but romance novels are not known for their realism. Even when a novel is fantastical, its happy ending may be considered too abrupt and unbelievable.  

‘Unrealistic’ is a strong word and one needs to look at the context of each story before applying it. For all intents and purposes, Amal El-Mohtar’s The River Has Roots (2025) can be considered a fairy tale. Like Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, and many other fairy tales it has magic, intrigue, a moral and clear villain, and a happy ending. The structure of the novella is also reminiscent of that of a fairy tale. The “[t]here was a time where” being an alternative to ‘once upon a time’ that is at the start of most fairy tales. When reading the story, keeping in mind its status as a fairy tale, the ending becomes less ‘unrealistic’. The ‘villain’ is punished, and the sisters get the ending they supposedly deserve. They get to reunite and live happily ever after. The element of the story that makes it feel more unrealistic is not the content but rather the form. Its ending seems rushed, less poetic and the writing style completely alters. “You’ll want to know, of course, what Rin said to Ysabel. It’s only natural, and I am sympathetic”. The narrator steps outside of the story and goes back to the first-person pronouns from the start of the novella. There is a clear break in the flow of the story, which is followed by a fairy tale-esque ending: “[a]nd their joy runs together like rivers, like voices, like families”.   

El-Mohtar has created a whole world that she barely gets into. She wants the story to focus on these two sisters and their lives. Yet, in an interview with Abigail Stevens, she has mentioned how elaborate the world in The River Has Roots actually is. “[P]art of the world-building […] sort of didn’t make it into this book because this is a small story focused on sisters, but I did so much more world-building than I usually do for [writing] a story”. Details of the worldbuilding come through, and the reader is somewhat aware of the work put into the world, but the focus is on Esther and Ysabel. The Hawthorn family’s willows, because of their close position to Arcadia, are the first willows to extract the grammar from the river Liss, allowing for a higher concentration of magic and thus a stronger effect. This is the reason that Esther is being courted by the persistent Samuel Pollard. Pollard also farms willows and owns the lands attached to that of the Hawthorns. A union between the families would allow the family businesses to double their profits. Despite Pollard’s courting, Esther is in love with an Arcadian called Rin. Rin is mystery and riddles where Pollard is familiarity and profit. One night, when coming home from her meeting with Rin, Esther is ambushed by Pollard, who again proposes to her. Upon her nth rejection of him, Pollard understands that Esther will never marry him and unite their lands, so, instead he drowns her in the river Liss and starts courting Ysabel. 

Esther transforms into a swan through the grammar of the river, which changes course and flows into Arcadia instead of out of it. With the help of Rin and a human grammarian named Agnes Crow, Esther regains her human form, but only in Arcadia. In the human world, she is either dead or a swan. She knows that Pollard will court Ysabel instead and is willing to give up her life with Rin to warn her sister. She is then transformed into a harp, and sings at Ysabel and Pollard’s engagement feast, exposing her murderer. Ysabel and Esther get to say goodbye, before Rin takes Esther back into Arcadia, where she will become human again. Here El-Mohtar could have ended the novella on a bittersweet note. The sisters get to say goodbye, knowing that the other will lead a happy life, but unable to stay together as they once hoped. They are not abruptly separated, like when Pollard drowned Esther, but the sisters do not get to return to the way things were. Instead, the novella ends with the sisters reuniting in Arcadia, where Ysabel joins Esther and Rin for dinner with her young child. By bringing a child, it is implied that she had a partner whom she left behind and intends to return to. Yet, throughout the novella, we are reminded that entering Arcadia is dangerous, and that those who do, often do not come back out. The sisters themselves are exceptions, as they entered Arcadia accidentally as children. They were only able to leave with Agnes Crow’s help. As the novella ends with Ysabel’s reappearance in Arcadia, we never understand how she could leave again. 

I read the ending completely differently. In my reading, Ysabel never intended to go back to the human world, so then there is no reason to speculate how she would go back. Throughout the novella, there are allusions to people entering Arcadia but never coming back. I read Ysabel’s arrival in Arcadia as something permanent. Before telling her how to get into Arcadia, Rin tells Ysabel “[t]he promise [Esther] made to you brought her back from the dead. You might ask yourself—what promises have you made her?”. The novella highlights that the bond and the love the sisters have for each other is unlimited. When talking about their future, they mention each other rather than spouses or partners. They want to raise their kids together and share their whole lives with each other. Therefore, I saw Ysabel’s arrival in Arcadia as a permanent move. Their promise to each other, to always be together, is now fulfilled as they live in Arcadia with Ysabel’s child. Time in Arcadia also runs differently. So, were Ysabel to go back, she would not know beforehand ‘when’ she would come back to, further sustaining my claim that she intends to stay in Arcadia.   

To me, Ysabel came back to see her sister again and then figured it out from there on. I do agree that she brought the child to at least introduce them to Esther, but it would be a lot to then take that child away from their other parent, as well as Ysabel’s parents and the willows. I read Ysabel’s return as following up on another promise. When Esther mentions that Arcadians cannot sing, and that if she were to stay in Arcadia she would forget how to sing as well, Ysabel says: “I don’t care how golden and honeyed Arcadia is, I won’t let you forget a single word of ‘Tam Lin’”. And in the second to last line of the novella she says: “We’re here to remind you of the words to ‘Tam Lin’”. Rin reminds Ysabel of her silly, joking promise, which was still a promise. In this fairy tale, in which words and grammar mean so much, even joking promises are strong. 

Here we see one of many references El-Mohtar makes, in this instance to the ballad Tam Lin. The River Has Roots works as a narrative on its own, and there is no need to understand or learn about any of the works El-Mohtaralludes to, which includes a myriad of folk songs. Tam Lin in this case is not only referenced by title, but its details are also referenced. In his myth, Tam Lin is a mortal, captured by a Faerie Queen and turned into a Faerie himself. His lover helps him return to his human form by holding onto him as he transforms into a multitude of beasts as well as fire. The same happens to Esther, and Rin holds on until she is human again.  

El Mohtar also mentions in her acknowledgments two songs: “The Bonny Swans” by Loreena McKennitt and Emily Portman’s “Two Sisters”, which are both versions of the “The Cruel Sister” murder ballad. This murder ballad from the 17th century features two sisters who are daughters of a farmer, where the older sister drowns the younger out of jealousy, in order to steal her suitor. After the murder, the ballad continues. The body of the drowned sister is found, turned into a harp and brought to the sisters’ home during the wedding feast of the older sister. The harp starts singing by itself to denounce the older sister as the murderer. The key difference between the ‘original’ murder ballad and The River Has Roots is the murderer. While in the ‘original’ one sister murders the other, in The River Has Roots, it is Pollard, the suitor that murders Esther.  

The tale-teller explains that Esther has undergone translation, which has resulted in her transformation into a swan, a harp and all the forms she has in between. As someone who studies translations, this representation intrigues me. I loved the meaning behind the use of translation as the magical act that is happening. Esther is altered forever and cannot return to her original form outside of Arcadia, and, similarly, translation alters a text. In order to be understood in the human world, Esther translates into a harp. Her body is completely altered, her arms and legs, now wood and strings, yet one thing remains unchanged, her voice. This can also be said about a good translation: the words are changed but the message, the voice of the text, remains unaltered. 

Do you think then, in a way, that El-Mohtar translated her text? Not between languages, but between forms? 

That is a difficult question. I think in a way, yes. El-Mohtar took a murder ballad and changed it into a novella. But calling this adaptation a translation would mean that all adaptations are translations. This is a bold statement, but maybe one can see adaptations as translations into a new setting or form.  

All translations are also adaptations after all, right? Is that not similar to what Walter Benjamin wrote? 

Broadly speaking, yes, this is what he says in his text “The Task of the Translator” in which he talks about translations and their importance for a text to achieve a higher status, to remain relevant and to continue living. He argues that nothing is translatable and everything is adaptation instead. 

The River Has Roots is inarguably an adaptation, and El-Mohtar never shies away from acknowledging this, thanking both McKennitt and Portman for introducing her to the “The Cruel Sister” ballad and for helping her get started on the novella. Though The River Has Roots is not just an adaptation of their songs, their influence can be seen within the novella. When Esther as a harp sings about her murder, she sings a version of McKennitt’s “The Bonny Swans”, using McKennitt’s set up of the verses. Each verse introduces a character and Esther’s relationship with this character and repeats two lines, “Hey ho and me bonny oh” as the second line of the verse, and “The swans swim so bonny oh” as the last line. These lines come directly from McKennitt’s song. Like with Tam Lin, El-Mohtar adapts aspects of these songs into her novella and occasionally references them directly. Still, this novella is a bright invention of her own, an adaptation and not a repetition. For example, in both McKennitt and Portman’s songs, the drowned sister’s body floats downstream to a miller, where the miller’s daughter mistakes her body for a swan. As Esther is drowned in the Modal Lands, where the grammar is still unfiltered, it reacts to her drowning and changes the course of the river. Instead, she floats upstream and ends up at a miller in Arcadia. For the universe of The River Has Roots, this is a clever solution, as it allows Esther to return to her human form, and for her to make the decision that she wants to become a harp and warn her sister. It not only allows Esther agency over her form, it also gives El-Mohtar the opportunity to create a happy ending. Whether or not the ending is unrealistic or perhaps too happy, I cannot deny that it is a satisfying ending. Esther and Ysabel are the true love story of the novella, and their reunion does feel good. Where the songs end with the exposing of the murderer, El-Mohtar gives us a world where the story does not end when the murderer is justly punished. 

By adapting a murder ballad into the comparatively longer written form of the novella El-Mohtar gives herself extra space and freedom to elaborate on the extensive world she built. Once the reader is past the beginning, where the difficult magic system is explained, the story successfully manages to capture all of their attention. The reader is absorbed until the very last page of the book and even then left hungering for more. The story leaves some questions unanswered, such as how did Ysabel enter Arcadia? Can she ever leave? 

One of the elements in the story that El-Mohtar adds to her adaptation is the notion of Time. Time runs differently in Arcadia, and one of the key features of this difference is its unpredictability. The best part of El-Mohtar’sdescription of this is how she subtly weaves it into her story, almost unnoticed. Despite the frequent mentions, it does not feel like it is forced upon the story; it almost seems natural, as if no other option could be considered. Of course time runs differently in Arcadia.  

Funnily enough, El-Mohtar’s publisher for this novella is also called Arcadia. Though unclear whether she chose to name Faerie this before or after she found her publisher, it adds extra detail. The publisher is the magical place, where grammar flows free, where people get lost, it is the unknown. Esther is curious about Arcadia and cannot help but want to return, like many of us who want to take a wander into the publishing world. Perhaps timeflows differently there as well? 

El-Mohtar may guide the reader, but, like you said, she does not force the reader to understand or to take it all in immediately. If you do not fully understand yet how grammar works, or how time works between Arcadia and the human world, you do not need to, in order to understand and appreciate the story. After all, El-Mohtar’s explanation of grammar is complicated and confusing. It may require a second, third or fourth read to make some sense of. It is similar to the references El-Mohtar makes that one does not need to recognize to understand the story. One of these is the Professors’ hymn, a song Esther and Ysabel sing to the Professors at the change of every season, a hymn in a strange language that they do not understand or recognize. “Their mother told them that her parents had thought it was Welsh, until the day a Levantine woodworker […] had said it sounded like Arabic, but a dialect she’d never heard”. It is a love song in which the North Wind carries messages to an exiled lover. It is also the “Lover’s Hymn” or “Tarweedeh Shmaali”, preserved by the El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe in their 2014 album Zajel, as explained by El-Mohtar in her acknowledgements. An unknowing reader may not see it, and El-Mohtar does not make it easy to recognize, but if one does recognize the hymn, one can see that The River Has Roots is more than a well-written fairy tale. It is a quiet protest. El-Mohtar explains that seeing right-wing people talk about Palestinians as though they do not exist and their displacement as unimportant is “not wholly unlike seeing people talk about Faerie”, a place that is not real. El-Mohtar, who is of Lebanese decent, continues:  

I wrote this book under the mental duress of seeing horrific war crimes against my people denied, excused, laundered, in the same language I use to tell stories. […] To every person who had the courage and conviction to say Free Palestine, to speak, scream, write, march, write to their representatives, confront injustice, and work for the liberation of all people: thank you. It’s so hard to feel like these acts make any difference in the vastness of the world, but I am here to tell you that they made a difference to me. 

Quiet protests are as important as loud protests. Everyone can protest in the way that suits them best, and here El-Mohtar made use of her writing talent to create a story that can be read by anyone. She managed to protest quietly, but when one listens, the protest becomes loud. 

The novella is full of forms of protest. One of the major elements of the murder ballads that El-Mohtar disagrees with is the eldest sister as a murderer. Motivated by her own experiences as an older sister, she alters the original to become a more relatable story. In an interview by Publishers weekly, El-Mohtar describes her novella as an autobiographical correction of the murder ballad “The Cruel Sister”.  

The eldest is jealous of the youngest, and they’re both being courted by the same man, who is somehow not the villain of the song. This always bothered me, because I loved the songs, but the sister story line never worked for me. I’m the eldest of four, and my sister, who is two years younger than me, is my favorite person. She’s the best human being on this planet, without any hyperbole. So, at its core, this story is an autobiographical correction to a 17th-century ballad type. 

The River Has Roots is a relatable tale for anyone who has, and loves, a sister. El-Mohtar shows the strength of the bond between siblings. She disregards the murderous relationship between the sisters in the original in order tofocus on the real ‘villain’, Samuel Pollard.  

While other parts of the story need a deeper understanding of El-Mohtar’s life and motivations, it is clear that Pollard represents capitalism. While in the ballads the justification of the murder is jealously, in The River Has Roots Pollard is motivated by none other than his greed. When faced with the reality that Esther will never marry him and combine their lands, he knows the only option to execute his plans is to dispose of Esther. That would allow him to court and marry the new heiress to the Hawthorne lands, Ysabel. To pollard means to cut off part of a tree to encourage better growth, therefore, as a name enhances the character’s traits. As he kills Esther to get Ysabel to combine their lands to get higher profits on both of their family’s business. Here again, there is a reference that not everyone will understand.  However, when understood it shows that El-Mohtar masters language and is capable of using it to her advantage in every scenario. This is reiterated in his punishment as, after Esther, as a harp, exposes him as her murderer, he is made to drink from the River Liss and turns into a willow and his branches are pollarded. “‘It’s an unruly willow,’ said Ysabel, quietly. ‘It needs coppicing.’ Wherever its branches were cut, it bled”.  

The more gruesome elements in the story, such as the murder and the punishment for said murder, make this tale reminiscent of the older fairy tales but still a fairy tale. On the surface The River Has Roots does not seem to feature a strong commentary on contemporary times. Yet, when giving it a closer look, it is impossible not to see the many layers that El-Mohtar has added to her story.  

I agree and I think therein lies the beauty of this novella. Not only does El-Mohtar focus on how to layer her story, her poetic writing style also feels like a gentle hand guiding the peal of those layers.  

She knows the power of her words and highlights this by building a magic system based on language and grammar. She wrote a story that works on its own, but, like you said, when the deeper meanings and contexts are revealed, the story ascends to a whole new level. El-Mohtar wrote a fairy tale with a happy ending, and a protest against oppression.