The key ideas

The Anthropologists

Ayşegül Savaş, 2024

Asya and Manu have been together since their student days. Both are foreigners in a big city, where they have their friend Ravi, a local friend named Lena and an elderly neighbor, Tereza. Asya is making a film about a perfectly ordinary park, and together they are looking for an apartment, so that they can finally make their life sturdy. Every stranger's apartment shows them someone's finished life, and every call from home reminds them how far they are from their own people.

Who it is for

For anyone who lives far from their home city or country. For those who love quiet fiction about friendship and marriage, where nothing loud happens and it's still hard to put the book down. For couples who have been together a long time.

We named you after a whole continent and you're filming a park.

Someone else's expensive clothes

“In a moment of panic, we decided to look for a home.” That's how Asya begins her story. She and her husband Manu have lived for a long time in a big city that the author never names, and both of them are foreigners here. They met when they were almost children, scholarship students in a foreign country, and they have been together ever since.

The first apartment they view is smaller than their own, but flawlessly finished. The owner sits down in a leather armchair and lets them walk through the rooms by themselves. Afterwards, in a café, they picture themselves coming here for lunch. The thought is pleasant but not theirs, as if they had put on very expensive clothes that don't belong to them.

Their friend Ravi zooms in on a photo of a round window on the phone and says: “Damn. The Royal Navy.” The apartment, he says, is ideal for a couple who have no guests and no children. “That part is something for you to decide.”

This is how The Anthropologists by Ayşegül Savaş begins.

A tribe of two

Morning. Manu leaves early for work at a nonprofit organization on the other side of the city. He makes breakfast, while Asya, in pajamas, makes coffee and sits down across from him. They have no rituals with a history behind them, no folk traditions and no faith, so small things like these matter. In the hallway they kiss, and Manu says: “Okay, back in my shoes.”

When they're alone, they talk in their own way, in a squeaky murmur, with pet names you won't find in any dictionary. They call themselves “T,” after a word they invented more than a decade ago. It means two people who are in love, who are a little sad, a little misfortunate, and who have always been somewhat clumsy and lonely.

Asya makes documentaries. She has received a grant and wants to film daily life, its unremarkable grace, in a park north of their home. At university Asya studied anthropology, and one professor asked the students to imagine an anthropologist observing their own everyday routines. Asya still summons this imaginary researcher in her mind. What rituals would she find in a tribe of two, with no shared native language, no religion and no family nearby? She often feels that their life isn't real.

Her grandmother calls on video and tells her to plant parsley, oregano and chives on the windowsill. About the film she says: “Forget about daily life. No one cares about that.”

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About the author

Ayşegül Savaş is the author of the novels Walking on the Ceiling and White on White. Her books have been translated into six languages, and her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review and Granta. She lives in Paris. The seed of The Anthropologists was her story Future Selves, published in The New Yorker.

All books by this author: Ayşegül Savaş

Terms from the book

  • Manu: Asya's husband. He works at a nonprofit organization on the other side of the city, is calmer than his wife and less often expects the worst. He doesn't like being questioned.
  • Ravi: Their first and for a long time only friend in the city. A tutor for high school students and a collector of old things from the flea market, he never says straight out what he thinks.
  • Lena: Asya's only local friend. She works in a café, is sharp-tongued and easily hurt, and her mother lives in a small town an hour away by train.
  • Tereza: An elderly neighbor two floors up. She left her own country forty years ago and loves poems, conversation and chocolate.
  • anthropologist: A scientist who studies how people live: their customs, rituals and kinship. Asya studied anthropology and, in her mind, looks at her own life through the eyes of such an observer.

All terms

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