Orhan Pamuk' s novel is set in the winter of 1992 in the city of Kars in the north-eastern part of Turkey. The story is narrated by Pamuk himself as he tells of the poet journalist Kerim Alakusoglu, known as Ka, who has traveled to this remote town to write about the events surrounding a group of young women who are committing suicide rather than give up their headscarves. This is a very contemporary story of the clash between devout Islamists and the secular state that controls Turkey. Isolating the action in the snowbound town of Kars we learn of the tensions through Ka's interviews with various citizens. Pamuk's narrative style presents a pastiche of events that blend together to form the story with both love and politics coming to the fore. The many surprises and shocks of the story kept me interested and I found new fascination for the contemporary history of Turkey. The translation by Maureen Freely, who has translated several of Pamuk's novels, is excellent. ( )

I found this book very challenging and it took me a long time to read it (and even longer to write about it) so this review may not do the novel justice. Snow is about an expatriate poet name Ka who returns to Turkey from Germany ostensibly to write about young Islamic women in the provincial city of Kars who are committing suicide in protest of the secular state's rules against wearing the veil. His ulterior motive is to reunite with Ipek, a beautiful woman he's longed for over many years who is recently divorced. In his time in Kars, the city is isolated by a snow storm and a military coup is staged to round up political Islamists. Ka finds himself in the midst of much political maneuvering and finds himself inspired to write a cycle of poems ending a long dry spell.

There are flashes of humor in the book such as a newspaper publisher who writes stories before they happen (and is often correct) and the the theatricality of political movements is satirized by having an acting company stage the coup during a theater performance. Much of this book though is fairly bleak, with a lot of emptiness, misunderstanding, intrigue, violence, and torture. The symbol of the snow is exploited to make the reader feel trapped as well in the claustrophobic microcosm of Turkish politics and religion. People in this book never really speak or act like people would in real life but instead are often symbolic representations of particular point of view, probably one of the factors the made this a book to read slowly.

Pamuk also kicks the reader in the gut. SPOILER ALERT: Midway through the book Ka finally realizes happiness by making love with Ipek. The very next chapter flashes forward four years to Ka - alone and miserable - being murdered in Frankfurt. Reading the rest of the book knowing that there's not a shred of hope for Ka is all the more challenging. END SPOILER

I found this book an interesting means of learning about the complex nature of modern Turkey. I appreciate Pamuk's literary style, but I can't say I "enjoyed" the book as much as I was unsettled by it.

Favorite Passages:

"The issue is the same for all real poets. If you've been happy too long, you become banal. By the same token, if you've been unhappy for a long time, you lose your poetic powers. . . . Happiness and poetry can only coexist for the briefest time. Afterward either happiness coarsens the poet or the poem is so true it destroys his happiness." - p. 127 ( )

I've been reading this over the last couple of days, a great book. On the surface it is about the author searching out his friend Ka and his lost poems. The author follows Ka from Germany to Kars, where the poet seems to find his muse.

The book also talks of the problems facing Turkey today, on the crossroads of Europe and Asia, not knowing which way to go. Nationalists, Islamists, Modernists, Separatists, Europhobes and Europhiles, an explosive combination together in one small town. ( )

This story is more of a vehicle to explore the different characters and issues of Turkey. Islamists, Atheists, terrorist, westerners, and those caught in between are all explored. In the end, the author's message is that we don't really understand any of them, that there's no way to do so. The main character, KA, drives the plot. He returns to Kars, Turkey, from Frankfurt Germany so that he can woo and marry the woman of his dreams who is recently divorced. The author builds up the story to root for Ka. However, three quarters of the way into this story, we know there isn't a happy ending for the protaganist. He doesn't get the girl, in fact, we find that he will be shot and killed four years after the main events of the story. Why do that to your reader? That seems a little mean to suddenly break into the story and write something like, "Oh by the way, I need to interrupt your story. You know the main character, it doesn't really work out for him. You're not really supposed to pay attention to him anyway. He is just a vehicle to say what I want to say about Turkey and the certain characteristics about its inhabitants." This isn't an actual quote, I'm just summing up my feelings. However, when I finished the book, and you find what Ka does in order to secure his own happiness, I think he deserved to be shot. The story is a good story because you have all these characters that have misconceptions about everybody else. No one really understands anyone. They all have these built up and romanticized stories or to villainize Islamists, Atheists, Westerners, and others. There is no middle ground, just ridiculous notions. The author himself even says his own story is one of them and not to believe any of it. You can pull that content from the passages below.Passages"We're not stupid we're just poor and we have a right to want to insist on this distinction...Mankind's greatest error, the biggest deception of the past 1000 years is this, to confuse poverty with stupidity. Throughout history, religious leaders and other honorable me of conscience have always warned against this shaming confusion. They remind us that the poor have hearts, minds, humanity, and wisdom, just like everyone else. When hans hanson sees a poor man he feels sorry for him. He would not necessarily assume that the man's a fool who's blown his chances or a drunk whose lost his will. I can't speak for hans hanson, but that's what everyone thinks when they see a poor man. People might feel sorry for a man who has fallen on hard times, but when an entire nation is poor the rest of the world assumes that allits people must be brainless, lazy, dirty, clumsy, fools. Instead of pity, the people provoke laughter. It's all a joke. Their culture, their customs, their practices. In time the rest of the world may some begin to feel ashamed for having thought this way, and when they look around and see the immigrants from that poor country mopping their floors and doing all the other lowest paying jobs, naturally, they worry about what might happen if these workers one day rose up against them. So, to keep things sweet they start taking an interest in immigrant's culture and sometimes even pretend they thinkof them as equals...When a westerner meets a foreigner from a poor country, he feels contempt. He assumes that the poor man's head must be full of all the nonsense that plunged his country into poverty and despair." p. 300p. 400I turned backed to Fazil and asked him what he would say to my readers if ever I was to write a book set in Kars. "Nothing", his voice was determined. When he saw my face fall, he relented. "I did think of something, but you may not like it." he said. "If you write a book set in kaas, and put me in it, I'd like to tell your readers not to believe anything you say about us, anything you say about any of us, no one could understand us from so far away.""But no one believes in that way what he reads in a novel." I said"Oh YES they do" he cried, "If only to see themselves as wise and superior and humanistic. They need to think of us as sweet and funny and convince themselves that they sympathize with the way we are and even love us. But if you had put in what I just said at least your readers will put a little room for doubt in their minds." ( )

A Turksih poet who's been in exile comes back to his home land; goes to Kars, a city on the Eastern Turkey which has been always carrying a political social conflict in Turkey. A heavy snow shut off the city from the rest of the Turkey upon arrival of our poet Ka to Kars. Then a Coup happens with the leadership of a theatrical figure who has been acting left-wing on the scenes defending Ataturk and his secularism. Narrator of the book is Orhan,a friend of Ka who is putting Ka's life into words a few years after Ka's death.