THE ANTHROPOLOGISTS

A young documentary filmmaker considers the ways she could live in the future.

Savaş’ unnamed narrator relates the quotidian circumstances of life with her husband, Manu, a nonprofit worker. Both are émigrés from different unnamed countries who met at an unnamed college in an unnamed country and moved to an unnamed city to begin their adult lives. Far from being remote and soulless, Savaş’ 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. Relating the details of the couple’s inside jokes and rituals—which bond them together in a country where they are not among the “natives”— Savaş sympathetically illustrates the power of the everyday moments of joy and comfort found in a cup of coffee, a snack, or jokes with a friend. Once the couple begins searching for an apartment to purchase in an effort to create a more “sturdy” life for themselves, they are treated to the interior workings of the households they visit on their hunt. The narrator’s work in progress, a documentary about a city park and its denizens, provides more opportunities to glimpse other ways to live and behave. The lives of the narrator’s and Manu’s families continue to evolve as well, with all of the attendant heartaches of illness, aging, and misfortune communicated, however awkwardly, from afar. Friends and neighbors experience their life crises during the brief interval illuminated beautifully by Savaş, 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.