Ayşegül Savaş captures the era of being an 'irresponsible grown-up' in her latest novel
The Paris-based writer spoke about her book The Anthropologists on Bookends with Mattea Roach
Ayşegül Savaş is a novelist and short story writer celebrated for her mesmerizing depictions of daily life, art and identity, often drawing from her own experiences.
Her latest novel, The Anthropologists, also falls into that category: it centres on a young immigrant couple in an unnamed city navigating friendships, the guilt of being away from family and the search for an apartment.
A lover of books and films where "nothing really happens," Mattea Roach was excited to talk to Savaş about The Anthropologists on Bookends, CBC's new author interview show.
"Even though the characters' lives are very different from mine — they're living in a country and speaking a language that isn't their mother tongue — the concerns they have about their choices, their desires and how they can live a meaningful life could have been pulled from late night conversations with my friends in my living room," they said.
In their discussion, Roach and Savaş explore the stages of growing up, the importance of art that reflects daily realities and the concept of finding home in place and people.
Mattea Roach: Can you tell me a bit about your own nomadic life and how it inspired your novel?
Ayşegül Savaş: I was born in Istanbul and then we moved to Adana and to Ankara — and then from there to London and Copenhagen, and then I came back to Istanbul to go to high school.
I went to college in the U.S., in Vermont, and then I lived in San Francisco in the Bay Area for close to 10 years.
It's strange. Paris is the city where I lived the longest in my whole life and I've only lived here for a little over a decade. I guess that sense of not having a home — and making a home of a new city, a foreign city — there's this idea that I have no childhood home to return to.
And yet, humans have a desire for home — to feel rooted.
I wanted to encapsulate that time of being irresponsible but being irresponsible grown-ups.- Ayşegül Savaş
I also started writing the novel at a certain threshold in my life when I realized that I was perhaps not young anymore, or that I was about to become not young. It was this painful discovery that one feels young and yet also has to make decisions and take on big responsibilities.
I wanted to, somehow, before I officially was no longer young, I wanted to encapsulate that time of being irresponsible but being irresponsible grown-ups.
MR: The novel is told through the lens of this main character, Asya, who's a documentary filmmaker, but she's in this long term relationship with Manu, who works for a nonprofit organization. They are each other's whole world in this city where they're both foreigners, both expatriates. Can you tell me a little bit more about them and their connection to each other?
AS: The whole book is about making a home out of new experiences or elements of foreignness. So it made sense to me that Asya and Manu wouldn't share a culture or a native tongue.
One of the leading questions for the novel was: if anthropology is the study of humans and their habits of belonging and making meaning, what would an anthropologist study if Asya and Manu were a tribe of their own? What's the unique culture that they managed to create through their own little rituals and what they consider sacred and profane?
That's much different than if you were in a relationship with someone of the same cultural background, because then you have holidays to celebrate, religious occasions — many, many things that are common.
But if you're from two very different backgrounds, then you have to create that. You have to create your own small culture and then add the complexity of being in yet another foreign place. Then that little culture you create does become something very, very important, even though it's small and it's only shared by two people.
You have to create your own small culture.- Ayşegül Savaş
One of the challenges of writing this book for me was that there isn't a big conflict between Asya and Manu, even though they're the central characters.
And I thought, well, how is that possible that, you know, you have a novel where the characters just love one another?
So I had to think about the book in different terms, in terms that weren't just like this plot arc of conflict and they must separate, or there must be a challenge. But how do you write about two people that love one another without problem and that are trying to make a life for themselves?
MS: Why do you feel, as an artist, that this depiction of daily life is such a worthwhile project?
AS: I have nothing against books with big dramatic plots. Obviously small daily life, quiet daily life, routine daily life isn't all there is to life. There are also big dramatic things happening.
But I think, first of all, that one has to listen to the type of writer that they are. Many of the themes, objects and ideas that compel me in writing have to do with the routine — and how we establish identities in our daily lives.
Part of the beauty of art that reflects daily life — it's a little bit like a still life painting. It makes you see it in a way that you might not have been able to see when you're living daily life. You think, 'it's just breakfast' or 'it's just a walk in the park.'
But when you see it filtered through art, it forces you to slow down, to see it distorted a little bit and therefore gain some of its beauty. From that perspective, the types of books that focus on daily life, I think, can teach us something about living in ways that are respectful to one another, or to our communities, or to the routine and care of living.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. It was produced by Katy Swailes.
