My notes, in preparation for the writing of this introduction, formed a web of densely concentrated insight on the human experience courtesy of Ayşegül’s latest novel, The Anthropologists. The book follows its main character, Asya — a documentary filmmaker — through the kind of rich chronicling of her everyday life that is often offered within the context of anthropological writings. The small, in this way, is made large, expanding to fill the container of major narrative events in ways that would typically be reserved for moments of high drama.

“Daily life,” Asya says at one point in the novel, “was a difficult story to tell.” Her grandmother responds by urging her to “forget about daily life,” because, in  ...