How do you make ordinary life sound interesting? That’s a question that the author of ‘Walking on the Ceiling’ and ‘White on White’, Ayşegül Savaş, beautifully answers in ‘The Anthropologists’, a novel about married couple Asya and Manu navigating love, friendship and life as they hope to lay down roots in a foreign city. The book spans documentarian and anthropologist Asya’s time studying locals in the city’s park, alongside searching for a new apartment for herself and Manu to settle down in. Multiple passages labelled ‘Future Selves’, ‘In the Park’ and ‘Principles of Kinship’ are as delicate as they are humorous in their observations of modern life, partnership, and leaving a home behind to build a new one. Although nothing extraordinary happens, friends move cities, arguments are had, and family members get sick, Savaş’s talent for verbalising the intricacies of the everyday linger with you long after the book is closed. IM

Published by Scribner