Nov 13, 2024

The Anthropologists

Shannon Carlin

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Shannon Carlin

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Carlin is a contributor for TIME.

An idealistic couple’s hunt for a new apartment becomes the catalyst for a quarter-life crisis in Ayşegül Savaş’s insightful third novel. Inspired by her 2021 New Yorker short story, “Future Selves,” The Anthropologists follows Asya and Manu, a documentarian and a nonprofit worker, as they look to put down roots in an unnamed foreign city. With each new real estate listing they visit, Asya grows increasingly concerned that they’re giving up on a life less ordinary for an existence that is more socially acceptable. By studying the daily lives and routines of kindred spirits in her current neighborhood—a withdrawn bon vivant, a naive loner, and a poetry-loving elderly neighbor whose mind is quickly fading—Asya begins to find joy in even the most unremarkable moments of her own existence. With subtlety and sincerity, Savaş encourages readers to be anthropologists in their own lives, in hopes they’ll discover for themselves what it truly means to live.

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