The Anthropologists - by Aysegül Savas

About the Book

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD LONGLIST * NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORKER, TIME, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, AND ELECTRIC LITERATURE * A DAKOTA JOHNSON x TEATIME BOOK CLUB PICK * VULTURE #1 BOOK OF THE YEAR * A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE SELECTION

Book Synopsis

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD LONGLIST * NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORKER, TIME, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, AND ELECTRIC LITERATURE * A DAKOTA JOHNSON x TEATIME BOOK CLUB PICK * VULTURE #1 BOOK OF THE YEAR * A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE SELECTION

"The Anthropologists is mesmerizing; I felt I read it in a single breath." -Garth Greenwell
"Savas is an author who simply, and astoundingly, knows." -Bryan Washington

Asya and Manu are looking at apartments, envisioning their future in a foreign city. What should their life here look like? What rituals will structure their days? Whom can they consider family?

As the young couple dreams about the possibilities of each new listing, Asya, a documentarian, gathers footage from the neighborhood like an anthropologist observing local customs. "Forget about daily life," chides her grandmother on the phone. "We named you for a whole continent and you're filming a park."

Back in their home countries parents age, grandparents get sick, nieces and nephews grow up-all just slightly out of reach. But Asya and Manu's new world is growing, too, they hope. As they open the horizons of their lives, what and whom will they hold onto, and what will they need to release?

Unfolding over a series of apartment viewings, late-night conversations, last rounds of drinks and lazy breakfasts, The Anthropologists is a soulful examination of homebuilding and modern love, written with Aysegül Savas' distinctive elegance, warmth, and humor.

Review Quotes

"Utterly enchanting." --The New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice

"2024 was the year of the breakup book . . . Here is an antidote. Manu and Asya's concerns are modest . . . It's a joy to be on this journey with them. Each sentence sings, and watching [them] find a home in each other rather than in the places they've been is defiantly, explicitly hopeful." --Vulture, #1 Book of the Year

"It is a novel that takes as its subject the texture, routines, and rituals of a particular lifestyle-itinerant and youthful, or at least untethered by children-and serves as sort of a field guide to its participants . . . One of the book's strengths lies in Savas's ability to capture the experience of life as an outsider in a new place . . . Savas approaches her novel with a keen awareness of the reality through which it crafts and filters its make-believe." --Rhian Sasseen, The Atlantic

"An erudite and elegant meditation on modern life and modern love . . . Don't be deceived by Savas's cool, matter-of-fact tone-beneath it lie layers of wisdom, delicacy and subtlety." --The Guardian

"The peculiar habits and folkways of the creative class are on study in Aysegül Savas's latest, The Anthropologists . . . Asya and Manu are on their own, left to figure things out from day to day, and, in that figuring-out process, life takes its form. Passing time, the book suggests, is all that there is." --The Wall Street Journal

"In this subtle and resonant novel, Savas charts the way we sometimes choose-and sometimes drift into-the path to our future." --The New Yorker

"Insightful . . . With subtlety and sincerity, Savas encourages readers to be anthropologists in their own lives, in hopes they'll discover for themselves what it truly means to live." --Time, "100 Must Read Books of 2024"

"Here, a unicorn: a propulsive, well-written novel about a couple in which both parties enjoy the other's company . . . The book feels a little like a magic trick. Through pitch-perfect observations, droll and intimate interactions, through attention and care, Aysegul Savas has conjured a page turner." --Vanity Fair, "21 Best Books of 2024!"

"The prose is fragmented and mesmerizing, attuned to the rhythms of daily life in this new city. A beautiful and wise novel about finding ways to belong, love one another, and compose a good life away from home." --Bruna Dantas Lobato, Lit Hub

"Aysegül Savas' perceptive new novel, The Anthropologists, follows a nomadic couple as they struggle to find an apartment in an unnamed foreign city . . . The idealistic lovers find themselves chafing against society's idea of adulthood and look to kindred spirits . . . in hopes of figuring out how to live a good life." --Time.com, "12 New Books You Should Read in July"

"Savas's third novel is a romance, an immigration story, and an open-hearted manual for living." --New York Magazine

"So I loved, absolutely loved The Anthropologists. It's by the Turkish writer Aysegül Savas. It came out a few months ago . . . The book is really about how you make a life together with someone else. And what is the bedrock of this book is that the relationship is really loving, but that It doesn't mean that the big questions of life are easily settled." --Alexandra Schwartz

"The prose, minimal and elegant, casts a well-rounded vision of existence, making clear that the small, mundane, day-to-day details are a large part of what makes a life . . . This is the world of The Anthropologists: slow and quiet, existing finely within the details" --The Brooklyn Rail

"The language between the couple and their rituals adds up to a study on marriage and how one should live . . . Everything about The Anthropologists is enchanting." --The Albany Times-Union, "Bibliophiles: Make Novellas Your Must-Reads of the Summer"

"For such a slender book, The Anthropologists explores a vast array of themes-otherhood, loneliness, transitions and love-in prose that's easy to slip into . . . An excellent book on how to 'make do' as you simultaneously feel alienated by an overarching culture while creating the spaces within it where you can belong." --NewCity Lit

"Under the cool gaze of narrator Asya, ordinary life in the city becomes an intimate study of human connection . . . As the three friends glide around the city, Savas's prose glides too, sanguine, thoughtful, and elegant . . . I finished the book with a desire to pay more attention to the many facets of life I ordinarily take for granted, the small rituals that give it structure and meaning." --BookBrowse

"The Anthropologists perfectly captures the anxiety of a certain time in life, when one is still young but no longer quite young enough, an anxiety exacerbated by the fact Asya and Manu are far from their homes and families; with each new part of their life they build, there's something else they miss. Rarely have I seen the panic of forging a life told with so much charm . . . I was eager to see them land in their perfect apartment (or home, dare I say) because I would very much like to visit." --Public Books

"An engrossing, perceptive, and elegantly philosophical novel about the practice of paying close attention." --The Baffler

"[A] slim gem." --Everything Zoomer (Canada)

"Here the gulf between life and art disappears." --The New York Journal of Books

"In the exceptional latest from Savas (White on White), an idealistic young couple flounders in their half-hearted effort to put down roots in an unnamed city far from their respective homelands . . . Savas captures the singularity of the couple's logic in lucid prose, and the real estate search gives shape to the spare and subtle narrative. It's a masterpiece." --Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"Savas' compact novel conveys warmth and human detail in exploring the universal question confronting all (named and unnamed) people: how to live or 'be' in the world . . . Friends and neighbors experience their life crises during the brief interval illuminated beautifully by Savas, creating further scenarios for her questioning narrator to investigate, as if documenting the social practices of an unfamiliar civilization. There are no explosions or battle scenes in this subtle novel, just an appreciation of the value and marvels of living a life that is your own. Perfectly perceptive." --Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

"Quirkily charming . . . Savas delicately balances humor with pathos, supplying the droll details that make these ordinary lives shimmer as Asya and Manu gradually but inexorably change over the course of time." --Booklist

"Savas so exquisitely captures the daily rhythms, concerns and interactions of [a] life ... Savas invites us to experience the renewable rules of expression - the old ways of being new - that are in play when an artist is performing at the sublime height of her art." --On the Seawall

"Like Walter Benjamin, Aysegül Savas uncovers trapdoors to bewilderment everywhere in everyday life; like Henry James, she sees marriage as a mystery, unsoundably deep. The Anthropologists is mesmerizing; I felt I read it in a single breath." --Garth Greenwell, author of CLEANNESS

"The Anthropologists is yet another gorgeous, gorgeous book from Aysegül Savas: she is an author who simply, and astoundingly, knows. Savas knows hope. Savas knows despair. Savas knows joy, and malaise, and laughter, and curiosity. There are worlds inside of Savas' prose, and The Anthropologists is both a bright light and a map for how to be. A massively heartening achievement." --Bryan Washington, author of LOT, MEMORIAL, and FAMILY MEAL

"Savas' prose is an X-ray-an acute portrait of the tender frequencies that make a life." --Raven Leilani, author of LUSTER

"The Anthropologists is about love, youth, and that most profound and elusive of subjects-happiness. Full of delicacy, wisdom and wit, this is another gorgeous work from one of my favorite writers." --Katie Kitamura, author of INTIMACIES

"In Savas's methodical hands, The Anthropologists is a refracting object. A looking glass. Look through it once and every party, every shared pot of coffee will forever feel like magic." --Massachusetts Review

"The Anthropologists offers an ode to monogamy ... Savas maps out this 'universe' with understated grace: the couple's shared nicknames and ways of comforting one another, their liking for pastries and detective shows, their few but rich friendships." --Rain Taxi Review of Books

"A great love story about aging parents, romantic love, and what it means to call a place home." --Electric Literature, "Best Novels of 2024"

"What makes this slim novel sing are the intricately drawn ways the couple spends their time with the people around them, whether neighbors, friends, or family members. As Asya and Manu view apartments and imagine different futures for themselves, Savas crafts a remarkable narrative about the ordinary moments that fill our lives." --Time, "10 Best Fiction Books of 2024"

"A meticulous chronicle of circumspection, a knowing assessment of the motions we go through in cities, and a portrait of aspiration . . . I found myself not wanting The Anthropologists to end." --Financial Times

About the Author