The Anthropologists

The Anthropologists by Ayşegül Savaş

Print Length: 192 pages
Format: ebook
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Genre: Immigrant, Literary Fiction, Coming-of-age story, Cultural Heritage Fiction

This one came to me through a recommendation from my ex-manager. She knew I was reading different immigrant stories and pointed me toward The Anthropologists by Ayşegül Savaş. I went in without expectations. What I did not expect was a writing style I had genuinely never come across before.

We accepted, children that we were, that we would remain foreigners for the rest of our lives, wherever we lived, and we were delighted by the prospect.

Unlike my last book, the story follows Savaş and her husband Manu, an expat couple, childfree by choice, living in an unnamed foreign city. They are searching for a new home, building a life from scratch, trying to find people they connect with, and quietly figuring out who they are in a place that does not quite know them yet. On the surface, it sounds like a simple story. And in many ways, it is. But that simplicity is exactly what makes it unusual.

Savaş is a documentary filmmaker. She spends her days in a park, recording the lives of strangers. And that lens, that observational, noticing quality, bleeds into the entire book. Savaş writes the way you think when you are watching the world from a slight distance. Unhurried. Detailed. No conclusions being forced on you.

Each time we visited a place for sale, we were intrigued by all the different lives happening in the city, the arrangement of space to work and rest, to store and display; the priorities of strangers that were so different from our own.

What immediately caught my attention was this writing style. It reads like someone’s inner monologue. Or a very personal journal. There is no dramatic plot pulling you forward, no urgency. Just two people trying to figure out how to feel at home somewhere, and the quiet daily texture of that effort. Making new friends. Navigating visits from parents who carry their culture with them and gently remind you of everything you have drifted from. Finding routines when you have no history in a place to anchor them to.

I can really connect with many aspects of this story.That specific anxiety of building friendships every single time you move somewhere new. The weight of knowing your parents will visit and see a life that does not quite match what they imagined for you. The strange helplessness of wanting traditions but not knowing where to start creating them.

Besides, we’d always known that wherever we lived would require us to change. There was no place where we could feel at ease, no language that, after so many years, we could sink into like a deep sleep. And we hadn’t even begun to consider the greater issues of being rootless yet, such as where we might be buried, what words of which language we might begin to lose when old age chipped at the reserves of our minds.

The above quote says out something loud that I have thought about but don’t have the answers for. The slow, unglamorous reality of being rootless is not just about where you live now. It is about where you end up. What stays with you and what quietly disappears.

If I am being honest though, the book tested my patience by the end. Because it is entirely observational, there is no anchor pulling the story toward anything. Some chapters felt deeply relatable. Others felt like they simply existed without a reason. I kept asking myself, what exactly is the point of just reading these observations? And I think that is a fair question to sit with. Some readers will find that openness freeing. I found it a little frustrating. Not because the writing was weak, but because I like something to hold onto at the end. That said, I do not think the lack of a definitive ending is a flaw. I think it is the point. Modern expat life does not have clean resolutions. You just keep moving forward, a little uncertain, a little hopeful, making meaning out of small things.

The Anthropologists is for anyone who has ever felt the specific exhaustion of building a life somewhere you were not raised. It is for couples navigating all of that together while also navigating each other. It is for anyone who has stood in an empty apartment in a foreign city and wondered, quietly, how long it takes for a place to feel like yours.

Pick this one if you are in the mood to slow down and just observe. You may not find answers, but you will certainly find some company.

Ratings on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being exceptional):
Quality of writing: 7
Pace: 5
Plot development: 5
Characters: 6
Enjoyability: 6
Insightfulness: 7
Ease of reading: 8
Photo/Illustrations: NA

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