Long Distance: Stories

by Aysegül Savas

Overview

A masterful and tender debut collection of stories from the acclaimed author of The Anthropologists, about distance and closeness in the age of connectivity.

"An exceptionally elegant, intelligent, and original writer.” -Sigrid Nunez

"She is an author who simply, and astoundingly, knows." -Bryan Washington

"The rigor of Didion and the tenderness of Sebald." -Catherine Lacey

"One of my favorite writers." -Katie Kitamura

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 American 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 center 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781639733101
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	07/08/2025
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Aysegül Savas is the author of the novels The Anthropologists, White on White, and Walking on the Ceiling; the story collection Long Distance; and the nonfiction book The Wilderness. Her work has been translated into seven languages and her stories appear regularly in the New Yorker. She lives in Paris.

Editorial Reviews

In Savas's astute and absorbing collection of stories, her protagonists find themselves questioning long-held assumptions about their innate qualities as encounters with friends and strangers, lovers and family members, prompt reevaluations that can sometimes be gently forgiving and at other times quietly devastating."” —The New Yorker

“Cosmopolitan and richly observed, the stories probe the disparate versions of the self that spring up in encounters with an almost-forgotten past: an old friend you'd written off too soon, people from the place you once called home, a host parent you couldn't fully appreciate. Savas is fluent in the ways we experience displacement and change, and how we seek connection over time.” —Vulture

“Savas captures the complexities of desire and loss in this gorgeous collection . . . With unsparing grace, Savas tenderly illustrates the struggles of her characters as they seek fulfillment. There's much to love in these brilliant stories.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Savas's characters uncouple, miss connections, and reunite after absences . . . These . . . seemingly modest pieces display Savas's great grace and simplicity, as the reader is reeled into her characters' lives.” —The Center for Fiction

“Sumptuous . . . creates a kind of omakase menu. Individual, perfectly composed dishes have both a visible and ephemeral connection with each other . . . The collective offers a rumination on the many ways there are distances in our lives.” —The Brooklyn Rail

“Tales of students, artists, and wanderers seeking connection as they strive to forge new paths in foreign places: Rome, Paris, Russia, and a body changed by pregnancy. The settings may be grand and distant, but the characters' concerns are intimate and recognizable. Savas sees the struggles of modern life and relationships with an elegant clarity and is breathtaking in her precision.” —Vulture, "28 Books We Can't Wait to Read This Summer"

“Alliances and affections shift, understandings waver and beliefs are challenged in this collection of stories which individually and collectively convey the difficulties of maintaining connections in a fractured world. Subtle but clearly drawn sketches of the ties that bind and that, inevitably, come undone.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“This lovingly written debut collection of stories centers on themes of aloneness, expectations, connections and modernity. In fluid and graceful prose, Savas presents whole, complex characters from across the world as they navigate pregnancy, tradition, friendship, love and transitions” —Ms. Magazine

“This elegant set of stories explores the quiet drama of relationships stretched across cities, languages, and time zones. From expats and artists to sleep-deprived parents, these characters drift between closeness and solitude.” —Tertulia

“The stories in Long Distance are to be savored. They are exquisite. The displaced people in them are straddling new and old lives in a sort of liminal space. Everyday habits become weighted and meaningful.” —Albany Times-Union

“Savas' prose is an X­ray-an acute portrait of the tender frequencies that make a life.” —Raven Leilani, author of LUSTER on 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 favorite writers.” —Katie Kitamura, author of INTIMACIES on THE ANTHROPOLOGISTS

“[Savas] writes with both sensuality and coolness as if determined to find a rational explanation for the irrationality of existence.” —Sarah Lyall, The New York Times on WALKING ON THE CEILING

“Savas' restrained style is a statement in itself, minimalist on the surface but more textured than what first meets the eye.” —Michele Filgate, Los Angeles Times on WHITE ON WHITE

“[Savas] portrays millennials on the cusp of the next phase in their lives, whether that's buying a home or exploring new relationships. Populating these tales are richly textured characters struggling to make room for new goalposts while accommodating the old . . . The characters may be vulnerable, but they are never overwrought, a balancing act Savas executes flawlessly.” —Booklist, starred review

From the Publisher

★ 2025-04-04
Feelings of disappointment, dislocation, and disconnection permeate novelist Savaş’ first story collection.

The distancing forces Savaş explores in her 13 stories include time, immigration, motherhood, and grief; all result in a need to reassess a relationship. In "Marseille," Amina, a new mother on a weekend getaway with childless college friends, sees a shift in priorities within the group as they are all forced to begin considering the passage of time. In "Long Distance," two newish lovers dance passive-aggressively around their differing expectations during a trip Leo takes to visit Lea, who's studying in Rome. Another exchange student, in Russia, can't connect with her needy, elderly host mother and can only appreciate the woman’s kindnesses in retrospect in "We Are Here." New parents, reeling from the effects of sleep deprivation, receive controversial advice about sleep-training their baby from one friend but feel an even greater sense of disorientation when the same friend treats the atrocities of an ongoing war as something one needs to “have a break from” in "Cry It Out." Upon hearing distressing news about a minor acquaintance, one of Savaş’ protagonists muses that the “lives of strangers appeared improbable only because they were seen from a distance.” This melancholic assemblage includes episodes of missed connections—on weekend trips, at family gatherings, or over text messages—as characters seek intimacy; or, as in the case of the narrator of "Notions of the Sacred," seek to excuse a breach in a tentative reconnection between friends. Alliances and affections shift, understandings waver, and beliefs are challenged in this collection of stories which individually and collectively convey the difficulties of maintaining connections in a fractured world.

Subtle but clearly drawn sketches of the ties that bind and that, inevitably, come undone.

Kirkus Reviews