Snow
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3.8 • 5 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Touching, slyly comic, and humming with cerebral suspense—a masterful novel of "political intrigue and philosophy, romance and noir" (Vogue) and the lethal chemistry between secular doubt and Islamic fanaticism from the Nobel Prize winner.
An exiled poet named Ka returns to Turkey and travels to the forlorn city of Kars. His ostensible purpose is to report on a wave of suicides among religious girls forbidden to wear their head-scarves. But Ka is also drawn by his memories of the radiant Ipek, now recently divorced.
Amid blanketing snowfall and universal suspicion, Ka finds himself pursued by figures ranging from Ipek’s ex-husband to a charismatic terrorist. A lost gift returns with ecstatic suddenness. A theatrical evening climaxes in a massacre. And finding god may be the prelude to losing everything else.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Orhan Pamuk’s penetrating story of turmoil in early 2000s Turkey mixes romance, danger, and the tricky dance of politics and religion. Exiled Turkish poet Ka returns to his homeland, partly to seek out his newly single love interest, Ipek. A blizzard strands him there while things go haywire around him. Tensions between the secular government and Muslim fundamentalists are near their breaking point, and the assassination of a local official kicks off a string of catastrophic events for Ka and those in his orbit, even as the catharsis breaks his writer’s block. Nobel Prize winner Pamuk becomes poet, philosopher, and historian all at once while tackling the complex sociopolitical scene, exploring the grey areas instead of taking sides. Get set for a slice of historical fiction that hits the head and heart with equal force.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A Turkish poet who spent 12 years as a political exile in Germany witnesses firsthand the clash between radical Islam and Western ideals in this enigmatically beautiful novel. Ka's reasons for visiting the small Turkish town of Kars are twofold: curiosity about the rash of suicides by young girls in the town and a hope to reconnect with "the beautiful Ipek," whom he knew as a youth. But Kars is a tangle of poverty-stricken families, Kurdish separatists, political Islamists (including Ipek's spirited sister Kadife) and Ka finds himself making compromises with all in a desperate play for his own happiness. Ka encounters government officials, idealistic students, leftist theater groups and the charismatic and perhaps terroristic Blue while trying to convince Ipek to return to Germany with him; each conversation pits warring ideologies against each other and against Ka's own weary melancholy. Pamuk himself becomes an important character, as he describes his attempts to piece together "what really happened" in the few days his friend Ka spent in Kars, during which snow cuts off the town from the rest of the world and a bloody coup from an unexpected source hurtles toward a startling climax. Pamuk's sometimes exhaustive conversations and descriptions create a stark picture of a too-little-known part of the world, where politics, religion and even happiness can seem alternately all-consuming and irrelevant. A detached tone and some dogmatic abstractions make for tough reading, but Ka's rediscovery of God and poetry in a desolate place makes the novel's sadness profound and moving. Forecast: Pamuk's reputation bigger outside the U.S. than in enjoyed a boost with 2001's My Name Is Red. This timely, thoughtful and demanding book may see it grow further.
