Point of View

Ayşegül Savaş's decision to narrate The Anthropologists through Asya's first-person perspective creates an intimate and immediate exploration of the expatriate experience that mirrors the anthropological gaze central to the novel's themes. This point of view transforms the reader into a co-observer, embedded within Asya's consciousness as she simultaneously lives and analyzes her displaced existence.

The first-person narration allows for an unusually direct access to the internal negotiations that define expatriate life. When Asya describes her thoughts during apartment hunting or her analysis of social dynamics, the "I" voice creates immediacy that places readers inside the constant cultural translation required of expatriate existence. This perspective reveals how expatriates must continuously interpret and reinterpret their experiences, making meaning from situations that lack the automatic cultural context of home. The first-person voice captures this interpretive labor as it happens, showing how identity formation in displacement...