The Anthropologists

(Paperback, ANZ Only)

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Unfolding over a series of apartment viewings, late-night conversations, last rounds of drinks and lazy breakfasts, The Anthropologists is a soulful examination of home-building and modern love, written with Aysegl Sava distinctive elegance, warmth and humour.

Asya and Manu are looking at apartments, envisioning their future in a foreign city. Removed from the web of family and its obligations, what traditions and rituals should they establish together

As they dream about the possibilities of each new listing, Asya, a documentary filmmaker, spends her days gathering footage from the neighbourhood park like an anthropologist observing local customs, anxious to know how people really live. Forget about daily life, chides her grandmother on the phone, no one cares about that.

Meanwhile, life back in Asya and Manu's respective home countries continues parents age, grandparents get sick, nieces and nephews grow up all just slightly beyond their reach. But the world they're making in their new city is growing, too, they hope. As they open up the horizons of their lives, what and whom will they hold onto, and what will they need to release

Praise forAysegl Savas

Ayegl Sava White on White is marvelous, as elegant as an opaque sheet of ice that belies the swift and turbulent waters beneath.
Lauren Groff

A haunting, irresistible novel. In Agnes, Sava has created one of the great characters of contemporary literature. I loved this book for its depth and perception, for its beauty and eerie rhythms, but most of all for its wonderfully dream-like spell. Its breathtaking.
Brandon Taylor

Despite the thriller-ish underpinning of the novel and the propulsive unfolding of the relationship at the books heart, Savas graceful and intellectual prose is the star of the show here. It makes air-light what might otherwise be a novel ponderous with weighty questions: What is the nature of art Does it reveal or conceal What is the nature of human connection . . . . Like a prism, this novel brilliantly illuminates the human spectrum of connection and longing.
Kirkus, STARRED review

[A] beguiling little novel Indeed, going out for a stroll is the activity that most resembles the reading of Savas book. The New York Times Book Review

Reviews

Yet another gorgeous, gorgeous book from Aysegl Sava: she is an author who simply, and astoundingly, knows. Sava knows hope. Sava knows despair. Sava knows joy, and malaise, and laughter and curiosity. There are worlds inside of Sava' prose, and The Anthropologists is both a bright light and a map for how to be. A massively heartening achievement. * Bryan Washington, author of Family Meal *
Like Walter Benjamin, Ayegl Sava uncovers trapdoors to bewilderment everywhere in everyday life; like Henry James, she sees marriage as a mystery, unsoundably deep. The Anthropologists is mesmerising; I felt I read it in a single breath. * Garth Greenwell, author of Cleanness *
Sava 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 favourite writers. * Katie Kitamura, author of Intimacies *