Snow

"One of the pleasures of writing this novel, was to say to my Turkish readers and to my international audience, openly and a bit provocatively, but honestly, that what they call a terrorist is first of all a human being. Our secularists, who are always relying on the army and who are destroying Turkey's democracy, hated this book because here you have a deliberate attempt by a person who was never religious in his life to understand why someone ends up being what we or the Western world calls an Islamic fundamentalist terrorist."-Orhan PamukWhether you are new to the writings of Orhan Pamuk or like me, a convert to his work in translation, you will find the book, "Snow," is packed, nay; overflowing with Turkish humanity. In Orhan Pamuk's self-avowed first (and last) political novel, the disaffected and somewhat anesthesitized inhabitants of Kars find their imperfect voice in his newest novel. Through mad-cap theatrical coup and broad, windy statements to an imagined and unhearing "Western Press," the reader is ingeniously treated and sometimes led by the nose through the complexity of an Islamic society desiring access to its past and admittance to the modern world.Therein lies the rub.Understanding is everything, although it can't immediately change anything. The readers of "Snow" will find many intricately drawn zany characters, who represent a spectrum of political fundamentalist Islam; adherents, admirers and detractors. All are deliciously served up on an exotic Turkish platter and are no less appealing for the remote locale of Kars.As a reader, I am consistently amazed by Mr. Pamuk's stellar ability to give authentic, credible voice to a wide array of eccentric characters, each effortlessly recognizable for all their foible. There is also a remarkable, transcendent levity to Pamuk's depiction of what are deeply tragic events; a rather mystical take on the "ship of fools" theory of life. When a young fundamentalist student in the book expresses his desire to become the "first Islamic science fiction writer" it is a wistful, encouraging and poignant statement. The people of Kars do not by any means lack for voice. What they lack is a stable political vehicle that allows the coherent telling of their tale.The varying degree of political involvement portrayed in the aloof dreaminess of love-sick Ka, ex-leftist, poet and main character; the complex hyperbole of Blue, fundamentalist outlaw, and Kadife, a forthright "westernized" girl from Istanbul converted to head-scarf activism represent the voices we don't usually hear behind the sad ubiquity of exploding bombs.There are plenty of Pamukian literary devices in this novel that address the author's recurring themes and symbols. These have to do with questions of identity and metaphysics. Some note has been made in reviews here (USA) pondering the possible meaning(s) of Ka's name. I am told the author was influenced by Kafka. If readers of "Snow," desire a clue to the meaning or significance of the town's name, ("Kars") see the ending pages of "The New Life (also highly recommended)."Every author has his own retinue of literary device and Mr. Pamuk continues to employ his own abundantly. The symbol of snow (in Turkish, "kar") is both tender metaphor and unifying symbol. Snowfall covers everything in the novel (and everyone) indiscriminately, possessing the miraculous nature of each snowflake's distinct design. Distinct design also aptly describes the Kars citizenry.As I was finishing this valuable, well-written book, an Islamic faction in Iraq was holding two French journalists hostage, demanding that France lift its ban on the wearing of head-scarves by Muslim girls in French public schools. The underlying controversy of the book? A ban on head scarves in Turkish public schools by the state officials of Kars, resulting in a wave of suicides by young girls. Or was that the actual reason? Decide for yourself, by reading "Snow". One of the great fortuitous compliments I imagine an author receives (to his probable chagrin) is life attempting an awkward imitation of his art. (Mr. Pamuk began this book before 9/11).Understanding is everything, even when it changes nothing. Perhaps it is all we, at times, can do.

(This review exposes the plot; skip to the last two paragraphs for my personal view). A poet named Ka, raised middle-class in Istanbul, returns from a long political exile in Frankfurt to a small, mountainous town in Turkey called Kars to investigate why young woman are committing suicide, ostensibly because they are denied schooling for insisting on wearing a political head scarf in public and thus offending the secular military authorities. Ka wastes no time in Kars and falls in love with the beautiful Ipek, a divorcee (living with her younger sister and aging former Communist father). Ipek is trying to recover from a former love affair with an accused Islamic terrorist named Blue. Ipek's headstrong younger sister Kadife has taken Ipek's place as Blue's lover (Ipek's involvement with Blue only becomes known late in the book). Passionate but poor students from the local school idolize Blue and seek to understand visiting poet Ka, who they suspect of atheism. Ka witnesses the public assassination of a high-level official who enforced the headscarf rule at the university. Blue is accused of the killing but innocent. After a night of political violence at the National Theater, Blue is captured. Ka, now involved romantically with Ipek, becomes a key element in a plan to get Blue released. Ka is tasked to persuade Ipek's sister Kadife to take part in a televised play where she defiantly takes off her head scarf on stage--thus pleasing the authorities and in return getting Blue released. The evening of the play, after Blue is released according to the plan, he sends a message for Ka to visit him. Ipek tells Ka not to go, and Ka's reasons for deciding to go are difficult to understand given his hope of future happiness in Frankfurt with Ipek. Blue tells Ka when he arrives to stop Kadife from exposing her head on the national stage. Ka returns to his hotel room and discusses this with Ipek. Ipek, while she and Ka are planning to leave for Frankfurt and packing suitcases in the hotel room where they made love, now tells Ka to obey Blue--that Kadife should not expose her glorious hair in public--but Ka now is somewhat unsure of Ipek's loyalty and locks her in the room (with her strange consent). Local authorities picked up Ka after his visit with Blue and informed him that Ipek and Blue were former lovers, and that Ipek's phone-tapped conversations indicated they were still a couple. Ipek escapes the locked hotel room but soon finds out that Ka turned in Blue to the authorities, who kill Blue, and that Kadife not only exposed her head on stage but unintentionally murdered one of the performers with a stage pistol that should have had blank cartridges. She will be sent to jail four years for this. Ka holds onto his fading dream of a life in Frankfurt with Ipek, but knows that he should have listened to Ipek's pleas and never left the hotel room to see Blue. Ka is escorted by authorities to a train leaving Kars for Frankfurt, but he realizes when Ipek does not come to the train that she must have concluded that Ka turned in Blue's location to the authorities. Ka and Ipek never see each other again. Ka, living alone in Frankfurt for many years after his stay at Kars, is killed by gunshot on a street by an unknown assailant never identified. Ka's friend, author Orhan Pamuk (playing himself in the novel), investigates his death by going to Kars. He also tries to find the 19 poems that Ka wrote while inspired there. He is unsuccessful in this, thinking that his assailant must have stolen Ka's green book containing the poems, but while in Kars Pamuk nearly falls in love with the beautiful Ipek himself. The author, playing himself, believes the young women in Kars commit suicide out of pride. At the end of the novel, Pamuk lists the actual page locations in the text where Ka wrote his 19 poems. Ka was apparently inspired whenever Ka feared that his planned happiness would be lost, either by fate or by his own crude incompetent decisions and actions. There is snow imagery throughout the book (possibly symbolizing Providence). It covers the decay of Kars and makes it appear clean and white. A six-pointed snowflake diagram is used by Pamuk to show how Ka organized his poems. The three axes of the snowflake are taken from Bacon's ideals of reason, imagination, and memory. (NOTE: I withheld a fifth star because this elegant, abstract organization of the poems did not seem to fit well with their instantaneous inspiration to Ka during times of stress or anxiety). The book ends as Pamuk leaves Kars on a train while snow falls on the shabby city: "The thin and elegantly quivering ribbons of smoke rising from the broken chimneys at last seemed a smudge through my tears." A good book can mean different things to different readers. To me this book was a powerful narrative showing that love and happiness--between Ka and Ipek or between Kadife and Blue--are not possible without freedom, especially when stifling traditions and age-old conflicts infect the culture. The story is Romeo and Juliet (or Abelard and Heloise) for the middle-aged--a tragedy. The canary in the coal mine here is the artist, shot and killed either in the street (Ka) or on stage (Sunhay) for non-conformist thinking and writing, illustrating how the destruction of free ideas and ideals, including the loss of personal love and the chance for happiness, follows somewhat naturally from excessive control, whether that control comes from military authorities or an aging, intolerant culture. On the other hand, ironically, an artist living in fear and under threat seems to experience his best inspirations--that's when Ka writes his poems most effortlessly. The artist's life in real life may not always be tragic, but it remains melancholy and sad: his life and culture as rising smoke from a broken chimney--a smudge through one's tears amidst the snow.

Quality of pages to cover, everything was as expected. The book was delivered in an impeccable condition

This book gets off to a promising start. An expatriate Turkish poet/journalist returns from Germany in a snowstorm, witnesses an assassination, and becomes involved in a headscarf controversy, but then the story goes on and on, and on and on, without getting anywhere. It finally picks up with a successful romantic interlude, leading the reader to hope for a happy ending, but then goes on and on again, finally ending with the main character dying back in Germany and his place being taken by -- the author. Perhaps the best parts are the short poems that pop up here and there.

I bought this as a sort of 'experiment' to branch out of my typical genres, and was incredibly pleased with it. It shipped very quickly, and was in excellent shape when I got it, despite being a used book. There were times that it lost my attention a bit, but others where it grabbed me and pulled me in until I couldn't stop reading. It's lead to a lot of really late nights, just trying to absorb as much as I could. Overall, a great book.

I am not a "big" fan of what I had read earlier by Orhan Pamuk. I liked My Name is Red but found it a bit long and intense, and I could not read beyond a few pages of Museum of Innocence. But I did find in these books an author who was at complete ease in dealing with complex plots, ideas, emotions and conflicts and who did this with elan.So when I read about the subject matter of Snow, my first thought was that he was probably the best person to pen such a novel. I wasn't disappointed at all as the book deals with a huge variety of very pertinent questions for our world. Though it is based in Turkey, I think a vast majority of book readers across the world will find the themes close to home.Love, loneliness, success and immigrant's uprooting are all issues that he deals with a touch that is both humane and hard-nosed. The backdrop of political tussle between popular fundamentalism and against it is a sensitive one to tackle and the book does that in a very balanced way - with adequate background and reasoning voices on all hues of opinion and without oversimplification.It's long and intense but it does flow along nicely - it's a very well written work from a master and definitely worth a read.

A gripping tale of love in a Kurdish Turkish snowstorm reveals the twisting undercurrents of secular and religious society driving Turkey's search for a place in today's world.