The Wilderness

The Wilderness

$17.95

Ayşegül Savaş

A deeply felt chronicle into the wilderness of the first forty days of new motherhood.

In the final weeks of her pregnancy, Ayşegül Savaş becomes fascinated by the mythology around the first forty days after giving birth, and the invisible beings that are said to surround the mother. “In Turkish, we speak of extracting the forty days, like a sort of exorcism. My grandmothers assure me that it will all get better after forty days are out.” A friend lends a book that suggests forty days of rest and fortifying broths and avoiding wind and cold.

In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, forty days are seen as a period of trial and transformation. They are often journeys into the wilderness and “its vast and unruly territories.” When the baby arrives, Savaş charts her own path into the wilderness of new motherhood—a space of contradiction, of chaos and care, mothering and being mothered. “What is the trial of the postpartum crossing?” writes Savaş. “Where will mother and child emerge once they have left the wild?”

In the first work of nonfiction by the author of The Anthropologists, Savaş invites the reader to journey with her into the wild—a place entered after creation, a place you never leave, and a place that, in a sense, never leaves you.

The Wilderness is part of the Undelivered Lectures series from Transit Books.

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Praise for The Wilderness

“As a personal chronicle, it’s arresting and deep, and makes for a rewarding entry into the growing pantheon of postpartum literature.”—Publishers Weekly

“Savaş distills and examines this limit-experience in a potent book that just barely surpasses 100 pages.”—Cultured Magazine

“Savaş documents the 'messiness and entanglement' of the 40 days after birth, a period so often completely invisible to the outside world, especially in a society of atomized families.”—Cora Currier, The New Republic

“In the days following the birth of her child, Savaş cracks open the idea of time itself, and considers the vastness of motherhood and new life. It's about ghosts, new planes of consciousness, and the wonder, horror, and enchantment of life.”—Mikaela Dery, McNally Jackson Books (New York City)

“Savaş’ meditation on the first forty days after giving birth – personally, mythically, theologically, culturally – is one of the most striking lectures I’ve ever read…There is an ambivalence that runs through this book, between knowledge and expression, that elevates it into something truly special.”—Bee, Pegasus Books (Berkeley, CA)

“I loved this book, loved how Savaş manifests the complex state of new motherhood with such blinding insight. I loved how so many passages hit with remarkable tenderness, as I look back now, beyond that postpartum wilderness, with wistfulness and awe.”—Hannah DeBree, Mrs. Dalloway’s Bookstore (Berkeley, CA)

“Savas argues that we mothers emerge from that beginning inexorably changed; we enter the wilderness and cannot help but emerge a bit wild ourselves. A perfect companion for reading in snippets during nursing sessions or wakeful nights—this is a book for anyone who enjoyed Jazmina Barrera’s Linea Nigra or Rivka Galchen’s Little Labors.”—Hannah DeCamp, Avid Bookshop (Athens, GA)

Praise for Ayşegül Savaş

“The Anthropologists is yet another gorgeous, gorgeous book from Aysegül Savas: she is an author who simply, and astoundingly, knows. Savas knows hope. Savas knows despair. Savas knows joy, and malaise, and laughter, and curiosity. There are worlds inside of Savas' prose, and The Anthropologists is both a bright light and a map for how to be. A massively heartening achievement.”―Bryan Washington, author of LOT, MEMORIAL, and FAMILY MEAL

“Like Walter Benjamin, Aysegül Savas uncovers trapdoors to bewilderment everywhere in everyday life; like Henry James, she sees marriage as a mystery, unsoundably deep. The Anthropologists is mesmerizing; I felt I read it in a single breath.”―Garth Greenwell, author of CLEANNESS

“[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

“A haunting, irresistible novel. I loved this book for its depth and perception, for its beauty and eerie rhythms, but most of all for its wonderfully dream-like spell. It's breathtaking.”―Brandon Taylor on WHITE ON WHITE

“The entire world of White on White is selectively outlined. What of it exists exists in crisp, clean prose . . . the narrator . . . resists providing the compassion and reassurance Agnes seems to so desperately seek. The results of this thwarted intimacy move the story inexorably toward a finale that, for a book so invested in visual art, feels surprisingly most like an act of literary revenge.” ―Larissa Pham, New York Times Book Review on WHITE ON WHITE

“'In the middle ages, human skin was seen as a blanket stretched to cover a secret, inner life,' writes Aysegül Savas. Reading White on White for me is like an outer skin which you open layer by layer as you read; gentle, mysterious and profound.”―Marina Abramovic on WHITE ON WHITE

“Aysegül Savas' White on White is marvelous, as elegant as an opaque sheet of ice that belies the swift and turbulent waters beneath.”―Lauren Groff on WHITE ON WHITE