Snow

by Orhan Pamuk

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375706860
• Release Date: July 2005
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 425 Pages
• Weight: 0.79 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 1.0" x 5.2"

Customer Reviews

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Understanding Turkey's Soul: "Snow" by Orhan Pamuk

My friend, Inga Keithly, has not known me for very long, but she knows me well. So, she was right on target when she handed me a book and said: "You will really appreciate this author's work." Thus was I introduced to the writings of Orhan Pamuk. In the midst of my reading "Snow," I was carrying it with me in downtown Boston. A passerby saw the book and remarked: "You are reading a book about my country. In Turkey, Orhan Pamuk is regarded as one of our finest writers. He has written many works in Turkish; this is one of his few works written in English." John Updike, who knows a thing or two about good writing, had this to say about "Snow" and Pamuk: "A major work . . . conscience-ridden and carefully wrought, tonic in its scope, candor and humor . . . with suspense at every dimpled vortex . . . Pamuk [is Turkey's] most likely candidate for the Nobel Prize." This political novel is set in rural Turkey, yet transcends its geographic setting to shine rays of poetic insight into universal human emotions and experiences. The protagonist, Ka, is a poet, an ex-patriot Turk who has been living in Germany and returns to his homeland to investigate the mysterious suicide of several young men in the Turkish backwater town of Kars. While in Germany, Ka's poetry muse had deserted him, but amidst the perpetual snowstorm that blanketed Kars during his stay there, poems once again came to him - seeming to crystalize in his mind like the unique snowflakes that enveloped him and his surroundings. Once back in Germany, Ka organized his new poems according to the hexagonal structure of a snowflake - a taxonomy that arranged the poems along axes that he called "Reason," "Memory" and "Imagination." I found Pamuk's syle quiet and subtle. I see many similarities between "The Kite Runner," and "Snow." For me, as a reader educated primarily on the canon of The West, reading the more interior-focused works of writers from Asia is an acquired taste, but one well worth acquiring. An analogy hit me the other day as I was grabbing a bite to eat at the Jaffa Cafe on Gloucester Street in Boston's Back Bay. I ordered a plate of falafel, hummus and baba ghanoush - and enjoyed it immensely. It was only after I had placed my order that I saw that this item on the menu was listed as a "vegetarian's delight." I am a classic carnivore (actually, a card-carrying omnivore!), and love my red meat, so it stunned me to know I had ordered and enjoyed a "vegetarian" meal. The tastiness of the ingredients had allowed me to transcend labels and expand the horizons of my tastebuds. Works like "Kite Runner" from Afghanistan and "Snow" from Turkey have accomplished the same broadening effect on my literary tastes. A recurring theme in "Snow" is the national inferiority complex with which many Turks wrestle - at home and in exile - as they live with the shameful legacy of the Armenian Massacre that lies as an unhealed and oozing national wound just beneath the surface of daily life. A pa

A Challenge, but well worth the effort

Orhan Pamuk is one of Turkey's most popular - and most controversial - novelists. He is often mentioned as a Nobel Laureate in waiting (and many rumours surround Harold Pinter's 2005 Prize in Turkey as a result), and yet he has also found himself in court over his political statements. "Snow" (in Turkish "Kar") is one of the increasing number of his works to find an English language translation. The story deals with a poet (Ka) returning from exile to travel to the Anatolian town of Kars to investigate a rash of suicides by young girls. Kars, it seems, has emerged as one of the flash-points between political Islam and the avowedly secularist ideals of modern Turkey. The city is cut off from the outside world due to a snowstorm and, as Ka wanders through a number of lives, the religio-political tensions manifest themselves in extreme and violent ways. There is also a secondary plot, in which Ka attempts to win over a former acquaintance to move back to Germany with him. This is complicated somewhat by the position her family holds in the town. For what it sets out to achieve, "Snow" is highly successful. The characters occasionally behave like cardboard cutouts, but this is predominantly a result of their position as representing an entire tendency in Turkey - Ka *is* secularism, just as the terrorist Blue *is* the force against the state. Orhan raises many questions throughout his novel, and yet the fact that most (if not all) remain unanswered at the conclusion does not seem to matter. The reader is left to make up their own mind which path is the correct one - just as the Turkish Republic must do in the future. The novel, therefore, can almost function as a call to arms, although one for both sides. On initial impressions, the dreamlike postmodern way of writing this novel is an obstacle, however soon the narrative devices stop seeming so precious and instead blend into the generally dreamlike quality of the work - much as the individual snowflakes often referred to blur into the entire snowstorm which allows the dramatic tension to develop. Some readers may also rebel at the idea of Orhan himself turning up in his own novel, however even this is tastefully done and provides something of an amusing counterpoint to the omnipotent-narrator viewpoint most commonly used in fiction. The only place where "Snow" is let down, and then only in a very minor way, is the translation. The translator begins with what would normally be quite a useful pronunciation guide for Turkish orthography, however the sounds are quite inaccurate and any reader attempting to pronounce names and places with reference to this guide is likely to have serious difficulty as well as being wrong. There are also a handful of ungainly expressions used, and once or twice there are errors which detract from the meaning of the text. The point of this review, however, is to critique Orhan's work as a novelist, which is first-rate, rather than to critique some rather inept translat

" . . . a terrorist is first of all a human being. . ."

"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 Pamuk Whether 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 that desires 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; its adherents, admirers and detractors. All are deliciously served up on an exotic Turkish platter and are no less appealing for the remote locale. 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 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 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 a 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

"No one who is even slightly westernized can breathe free."

The rich story-telling tradition of the Middle East enlivens Turkish author Pamuk's novel about the residents of Kars, a town in the remote northeast corner of Turkey, once a crossroads for trade between Turkey, Soviet Georgia, Armenia, and Iran, but now a place of enormous poverty. Ka, a poet with writer's block, arrives in Kars at the beginning of a three-day blizzard, sometime in the early 1990s, to investigate a spate of suicides by young women forbidden to wear headscarves in school, but he is also there hoping to reconnect with his life-long love, Ipek, who is now single. All the conflicting political and religious movements of the country are exemplified in Kars--socialism and communism, atheism, political secularism, Kurdish nationalism, and the most rapidly growing movement, Islamist fundamentalism, and Ka comes into contact with all of them. As he investigates the girls' suicides and becomes reacquainted with Ipek, he also witnesses the coffeeshop shooting of the Director of Education, the man who has carried out the government's orders to ban the "headscarf girls" from school. His assailant is a young member of the Freedom Fighters for Islamic Justice, a group Ka comes to know. A military coup at the National Theater begins when soldiers burst in, shoot randomly into the audience, kill a number of people, then round up "dangerous" citizens, including some of the people Ka has visited. Ultimately, Ka's life is in danger, and Ipek must choose whether to go with him to Germany or to stay in Kars. Articulate in its depiction of almost inexplicable contradictions, Snow is not a western novel and does not adhere to western literary conventions of plot or character. The execution of the Director of Education, the army coup, and the follow-up are used primarily as vehicles for exploring the many competing philosophical and political movements, a focus on abstractions rarely seen in American literary fiction. The plot is absorbing for a reader who is interested in politics and religion, but the novel may be slow for readers looking for a plot- or character-based novel. The characters, while intriguing, are more representative of types than individuals. Published in Turkey and Europe before September 11, the novel has an ominous prescience to it. Rich with insights into rapidly rising fundamentalist movements and why they seek our destruction, this haunting novel is many-leveled, beautifully wrought, and complex. Packed with ironies, dark humor, and enough symbolism to keep a symbol-hunter busy for days, this realistic depiction of the environment in which extremist movements take root and flourish is a chilling reminder of how the world has changed. Mary Whipple