Aysegül Savas

A "marvelous" (Lauren Groff) and "gentle, mysterious and profound” (Marina Abramović) novel about a woman who has come undone. A student moves to the city to research Gothic nudes, renting an apartment from a painter, Agnes, who lives in another town with her husband. One day, Agnes arrives in the city and settles into the upstairs studio. In their meetings on the stairs, in the studio, at the corner café, the kitchen at dawn, Agnes tells stories of her youth, her family, her marriage, and ideas for her art - which is always just about to be created. As the months pass, it becomes clear that Agnes might not have a place to return to. The student is increasingly aware of Agnes's disintegration. Her stories are frenetic; her art scattered and unfinished, white paint on a white canvas. What emerges is the menacing sense that every life is always at the edge of disaster, no matter its seeming stability. Alongside the research into human figures, the student is learning, from a cool distance, about the narrow divide between happiness and resentment, creativity and madness, contentment and chaos. White on White is a sharp exploration of empathy and cruelty, and the stunning discovery of what it means to be truly vulnerable, and laid bare.

A Novel

White on White

Asya and Manu are looking at apartments, envisioning their future in a foreign city. What should their life here look like? Can they create their own traditions and rituals? Whom can they consider family?

As the young couple dreams about the possibilities of each new listing, Asya, a documentarian, spends her days gathering footage from the neighborhood park like an anthropologist observing local customs. “Forget about daily life,” chides her grandmother on the phone. “We named you for a whole continent and you're filming a park.” 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, into something that will be distinctly theirs. As they open up the horizons of their lives, what and whom will they hold onto, and what will they need to release?

Hailed by Lauren Groff and Marina Abramovic, Savas's fine, precise craft turns The Anthropologist's simple apartment search into a soulful, often funny, examination of modern coupledom, home-building, and expat life in the universal modern city.

The Anthropologists

A mesmerizing novel set in Paris and a changing Istanbul, about a young Turkish woman grappling with her past - her country's and her own - and her complicated relationship with the famous British writer who longs for her memories. After her mother's death, Nunu moves from Istanbul to a small apartment in Paris. One day outside of a bookstore, she meets M., an older British writer whose novels about Istanbul Nunu has always admired. They find themselves walking the streets of Paris and talking late into the night. What follows is an unusual friendship of eccentric correspondence and long walks around the city. M. is working on a new novel set in Turkey and Nunu tells him about her family, hoping to impress and inspire him. She recounts the idyllic landscapes of her past, mythical family meals, and her elaborate childhood games. As she does so, she also begins to confront her mother's silence and anger, her father's death, and the growing unrest in Istanbul. Their intimacy deepens, so does Nunu's fear of revealing too much to M. and of giving too much of herself and her Istanbul away. Most of all, she fears that she will have to face her own guilt about her mother and the narratives she's told to protect herself from her memories. A wise and unguarded glimpse into a young woman's coming into her own, Walking on the Ceiling is about memory, the pleasure of invention, and those places, real and imagined, we can't escape.

Walking on the Ceiling

Maureen Freely

Tezer Özlü

Cold Nights of Childhood

Future Selves

From the acclaimed author of one of Barack Obama's favorite books of 2024 The Anthropologists, comes a masterful collection of stories about distance and closeness in the age of connectivity.

Stories

Long Distance

Acclaimed author of The Anthropologists Aysegül Savas’s acute and tender first collection explores the distances we keep, and those we try to close, in the age of connectivity. A researcher abroad in Rome eagerly awaits a visit from her long distance lover, only to find he is not the same man she remembers. An expat meets a childhood friend on a layover and is dismayed by her unexpected contentment. A newly pregnant woman considers the taboo of sharing the news too soon, but can't resist when an opportunity comes to patch up a damaged friendship. Long Distance showcases Savas's devastating talent for the short story. Her shrewd encapsulations of contemporary life often centre on characters displaced more by choice than circumstance, characters both determined to install themselves in new lives and preoccupied with the people they've left behind. ‘Don’t be deceived by Savas’s cool, matter-of-fact tone – beneath it lie layers of wisdom, delicacy and subtlety’ Guardian ‘Singular, delightful… The melancholy of these narrators, though tangible, treads only lightly on the text – an effect achieved through the spareness of Savas’s prose style’ TLS ‘Rome, Marseille, Istanbul, Paris and small-town Russia are the backdrops for these tender stories’ Daily Mail ‘An exceptionally elegant, intelligent, and original writer’ Sigrid Nunez ‘The rigor of Didion and the tenderness of Sebald’ Catherine Lacey ‘One of my favourite writers’ Katie Kitamura

Savas Aysegã1/4l

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVOURITE BOOKS OF 2024 ‘An erudite and elegant meditation on modern life and modern love... Asya and Manu could very well be a couple in a novel by Sally Rooney or Caleb Azumah Nelson.' GUARDIAN ​'Immaculately observed... I found myself not wanting The Anthropologists to end.' FINANCIAL TIMES ‘Savaş’ prose is an X-ray – an acute portrait of the tender frequencies that make a life.’ RAVEN LEILANI __________________________________________________________________________________ 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? 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 Aysegül Savaş’ distinctive elegance, warmth and humour. __________________________________________________________________________________ Praise for THE ANTHROPOLOGISTS ‘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 ‘Like Walter Benjamin, Ayşegül Savaş 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 ‘Yet another gorgeous, gorgeous book from Aysegül Savaş: she is an author who simply, and astoundingly, knows. Savaş knows hope. Savaş knows despair. Savaş knows joy, and malaise, and laughter and curiosity. There are worlds inside of Savaş' prose, and The Anthropologists is both a bright light and a map for how to be. A massively heartening achievement.’ BRYAN WASHINGTON

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD LONGLIST * NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORKER, TIME, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, AND ELECTRIC LITERATURE * A DAKOTA JOHNSON x TEATIME BOOK CLUB PICK * VULTURE #1 BOOK OF THE YEAR * A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE SELECTION

'Savas writes with both sensuality and coolness, as if determined to find a rational explanation for the irrationality of existence...' New York Times 'I fell in love with this book.' Katie Kitamura, author of Audition and A Separation The mesmerizing debut novel by the author of The Anthropologists set in Paris and Istanbul, about a young Turkish woman grappling with her past and her complicated relationship with a famous British writer. After her mother's death, Nunu moves from Istanbul to a small apartment in Paris. One day outside of a bookstore, she meets M., an older British writer whose novels about Istanbul Nunu has always admired. They find themselves walking the streets of Paris and talking late into the night. What follows is an unusual friendship of eccentric correspondence and long walks around the city. M. is working on a new novel set in Turkey and Nunu tells him about her family, hoping to impress and inspire him. She recounts the idyllic landscapes of her past, mythical family meals, and her elaborate childhood games. As she does so, she also begins to confront her mother's silence and anger, her father's death, and the growing unrest in Istanbul. Their intimacy deepens, so does Nunu's fear of revealing too much to M. and of giving too much of herself and her Istanbul away. Most of all, she fears that she will have to face her own guilt about her mother and the narratives she's told to protect herself from her memories. A wise and unguarded glimpse into a young woman's coming into her own, Walking on the Ceiling is about memory, the pleasure of invention, and those places, real and imagined, we can't escape.

Aysegül Savas

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