The desolate city was plunged into a profound stillness, as if time itself had ground to a halt. Snow was gently falling, blanketing everything in a soft, white silence. And the quiet of this empty city was as if the world had come to an end, and it was snowing.

He wandered the cold streets of the city, accompanied only by his poems. The snowflakes swirled around him, creating a cocoon of solitude. He was in Kars, a remote Turkish city where the poor were forgotten, democracy seemed non-existent, and the Western world turned a blind eye. He, a prodigal son, was never fully accepted, a loner misunderstood, a man whose angst could only be expressed through the medium of poetry. If this were the beginning of a poem, he would have called the thing he felt inside him the silence of snow.

There, like the snow, he walked the city with a quiet deliberateness, observing everything around him. Kars became his muse, inspiring him to pen his thoughts and feelings.

\\n  

But- just as the poem itself defies easy explanation - it is difficult to say how much he decided at that moment and how much of his life was determined by the hidden symmetries this book is seeking to unveil.

\\n

The question of what lies at the core of a man's heart when he is torn between love for a woman and love for the art of poetry is a complex one. How does one explain the fragmented pieces of a person's soul when faced with a home that no longer feels familiar, a city that has rejected him, a woman he can never have, and a mindset that sets him apart from his peers? Loneliness and despondency are recurring themes in this book, as Ka battles with his darkening thoughts, even as he experiences fleeting moments of joy. Politics and religion are also prominent themes, weaving their way through each chapter and painting a vivid picture of the socio-political-economic climate. This is not an easy book to read, nor is it a simple story with a straightforward plot. However, it is a fascinating exploration of the mind of a political exile and the daily lives of those trapped within the confines of their own homeland.

Ka, a poet exiled from Turkey, returns to his homeland with the intention of writing about a series of suicides among young girls in the city of Kars. At least, that's the initial reason given. However, the situation becomes more complex when he discovers that a woman he has loved lives there and is recently divorced.

I was intrigued by the story of "Snow" and its imagery. The way snow masks violence, isolates people, and the uniqueness of snowflakes are recurring themes. I was especially interested in the poems, but unfortunately, the reader never gets to read them. Although the narrative provides a reasonable explanation in the end, I couldn't help but feel disappointed at being deprived of such a central element of the story. There are frequent remarks about how poets distance themselves from what's happening to protect their hearts and allow poems to emerge from events, as seen here:

"Ka had explained to me that when a good poet is confronted with difficult facts that he knows to be true but also inimical to poetry, he has no choice but to flee to the margins; it was, he said, this very retreat that allowed him to hear the hidden music that is the source of all art."

But since we don't have access to the poems, it effectively separates the reader from Ka's true emotions and feelings about almost everything.

Another issue that affected my enjoyment of the story was the narrator. It's a friend of Ka's who is recounting Ka's journey, reconstructed through journals, newspaper articles, and interviews. This isn't immediately obvious, but I don't think it's a spoiler to mention it. However, this approach further distances the reader from the central emotion of the story. I also guessed one event that I suspect was supposed to be a major revelation, although the narrator often stumbles over himself while telling the juicy parts of the story, forcing him to go back and put it into context. Amusing, yet frustrating.

Another element that I had difficulty with was the reaction to violence. The director of the Institute of Education is killed in front of Ka and Ipek, and although they quickly leave the cafe, there's no sense of danger. Nor is there a sense of fear when people are killed by revolutionaries in public. This didn't seem realistic to me, and I attribute it to the unreliable narrator. I understand that Ka was channeling his emotions into his poetry (which we never see), but what about everyone else living in Kars? Why would they go to a theater where there was violence at the last performance in that space, only to experience violence again? I'll admit that I may not be reading between the lines enough, or that the narrator is omitting the details that most people would provide. It made it very difficult to connect with the story.

Some other interesting snippets on writing, poetry, and happiness:

"Only people who are very intelligent and very unhappy can write good poems. So you heroically undertook to endure the pains of faithlessness, just to be able to write good poems. But you didn't realize then that when you lost that voice inside you, you'd end up all alone in an empty universe."

"But doesn't life make us unhappy?"
"We do that to ourselves."

"Only the purest poets allow love into their hearts in time of revolution."

When Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize in 2006, his Nobel Lecture, “My Father’s Suitcase,” was filled with passages expressing his thoughts on being a writer.

He said, “A writer is someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is...”

He also wrote, “I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at all of you, so very, very angry at everyone...”

In his novel Snow, Pamuk puts one of his “second beings” on display. The story follows the questing, lonely poet Ka, who visits the remote town of Kars.

Ka arrives in Kars during a snowstorm and is effectively trapped in the city. The novel is the story of those few days in a community sealed off from the world.

The snow means different things to different people, and we see how that plays out over the course of the story.

Ka was purportedly drawn to Kars to write an article about the “suicide girls,” but his real motives have more to do with love, nostalgia, and the reclaiming of a lost past.

He ends up embroiled in the machinations of everyone in the town, and despite his attempts to escape, he cannot.

Pamuk deals with the problems of the East/West divide and his poor country that is caught in the middle.

His characters express their desire to be seen as human beings, not just as representatives of a particular group.

The book is a slow, meditative exploration of philosophy, spirituality, religion, and politics.

It has a plot, but it is also filled with long digressions and discussions.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Turkish politics or culture, or who enjoys thought-provoking novels.

Just be prepared to be patient and to do a bit of research before diving in.

It will be worth it in the end, as you will gain a deeper understanding of the complex issues that Pamuk is exploring.

The expatriate poet Ka makes a return to his native Turkey. Ostensibly, he does so to look into the increasing number of suicides among the so-called "head scarf girls" for an article in a German newspaper. However, in reality, his true motive is to reconnect with the beautiful divorcee Ipek, whom he knew during his college days. Once there, he finds himself embroiled in religious and political intrigues.

I had the impression that the book was overly long, and the characters failed to capture my interest to a great extent. Nevertheless, I truly admired the way in which the Nobel Prize winner Pamuk crafts the atmosphere of the small city of Kars (along with its diverse range of people) during a severe snowstorm. Additionally, I liked how he depicts the Islamists within Turkish culture - as well as the secular revolutionaries and artists - as fiercely Romantic individualists. They are angry at the West, above all else, because we are reluctant to recognize and respect the individuality of their religious passion. This unique portrayal adds depth and complexity to the story, making it a thought-provoking read despite its length and some less engaging characters.

In many aspects, Snow bears resemblance to some of Pamuk's other novels. Just as Ka wanders around Kars, Galip wanders around Istanbul in The Black Book. Ka's oscillation between sharp perception of others and paralyzing insecurities about himself is reminiscent of that in Black in My Name is Red. It seems as if Pamuk is repeatedly writing the same novel - a novel about how men define themselves, especially those who find they no longer seem to fit into the physical space they inhabit. In this case, Ka is unsure if he can still be considered Turkish after living in Germany for so long.

The book doesn't provide a definite answer to this question either. Ka returns to Turkey only to realize that writing doesn't simplify the decisions he has to make during his stay in Kars. Does he believe in God? Does he love Ipek? Should he stay in Turkey? Does he support Westernization? It would be easy to reduce this novel to a story of East meeting West through Ka, but the novel is more interested in what happens when one attempts to write about that intersection. In fact, this novel consists entirely of various forms of writing - newspaper articles, play productions, poems, speeches, video recordings, and Ka's notes. All these are filtered through the narrator, who is trying to locate "Ka" in those documents. As if by finding the green notebook or deciphering the snowflake diagram, one could concretely define Ka's identity. The end result is a rather cruel joke. The narrator, Orhan Pamuk, spends a great deal of time collecting all the pieces of paper that make up Ka's life and then spends even more time piecing them together, only to find that Ka is not a very interesting person. He is a failed poet and a poor lover. The intense focus on identity leads to a dead end where Ka cannot be recovered through writing, just as the events in Kars cannot be explained or understood through the novel.

Ka's motivations, his misogyny, and his general indifference to others often go unnoticed by the narrator, making the reader wonder where the narrator's fascination with Ka stems from. It is, of course, an ironic fascination. By becoming so engrossed in Ka and his actions, the narrator fails to understand the underlying problems in the system and in the coup. There is no "right" side in this novel. The secularists, the Kurdish Nationalists, the Islamic fundamentalists, the Westernized Turkish exiles, and the ex-Communists are all simply passing around the same power system. It is a system in which women become icons for men, just as Ipek is for Ka. As a result, the initial story that brings Ka to Kars - the suicide girls - fades out of the narrative until even Kadife becomes tired of it. This story fizzles out as Kadife neatly sums it up: "I'm sick of hearing men talk about why suicide girls commit suicide." It is this story - the initial narrative that Ka sympathizes with but doesn't apply to his own life - that holds the key to the other stories of isolation, social pressure, and political coercion. But the suicide girls end up forgotten in this book as the men talk about them to the point of reducing those women to mere stories.
I like Pamuk's novels, but I find them very challenging to read. They are slow-paced, philosophical, and the main character is often so contradictory as to be elusive. This novel doesn't have the same experimental structure as My Name is Red. The narrative framework is more subtle. But I think that given the focus on writing, identity, and politics, this approach is more appropriate.

This is my second encounter with Orhan Pamuk's works. The first one, The Museum Of Innocence, instantly became one of my all-time favorites and was promptly placed on the shelf. Therefore, my expectations for Snow were sky-high. That being said, I was a bit let down, probably mainly because this was also a political intrigue plot, something that has never held much interest for me. However, I had no trouble recognizing the melodious and picturesque prose that had the power to seduce me into another, forgotten world, just as I had loved in The Museum of Innocence.

I have read more than one professional review that notes Pamuk as the contemporary writer "most likely" to represent Turkey for The Nobel Prize in Literature. Truly, I am confident that this is just a formality, as there is really no competition. He, and only he, is responsible for the rest of the world recognizing his country's stature. In the literary world, no other Turkish writer today can come close to his name; his works and his abilities in expressing the struggles and grandeur of his beloved country are无与伦比.

Snow is very appropriately titled. Its metaphoric meaning is scattered throughout the text, parallel to the literal vignettes describing the constant snowfall in the city of Kars, where our hero, Ka, is visiting. Ka, the name he prefers (derived from his initials) to Kerim Alakusoglu, is an exiled poet. Many years ago, after being involved in politics for some time along with Ipek and the narrator, a poem he wrote led to his need to escape from the Turkish authorities to nearby Germany. Visiting Istanbul and seeing old friends for the first time in many years, he was given the ostensible reason to visit Kars by a friend in newspaper reporting. A very religious and politically charged election campaign needed coverage. Alongside the political campaigns is the story of the headscarf-wearing girls who have begun committing suicide in an unsettling number. His real interest in visiting a city so mired in poverty and violence is out of love. Namely, a mutual friend from their youth, Ipek, recently divorced, is now residing in Kars with her father, who owns the hotel there, and her sister, Kadife, who happens to be the leader of the aforementioned "headscarf girls".

The local government had recently started enforcing laws requiring them to remove their scarves in higher education establishments, thus forcing the sixteen-year-olds to choose between their deeply ingrained religious beliefs and their desire to receive a higher education. A small number of girls have refused to acquiesce to such enforcement tactics from the government (the aforementioned "headscarf girls"). Unfortunately, under pressure from their families, friends, and neighbors, a few have taken their own lives. This says a lot more than what one might initially think, as The Koran very clearly designates suicide as a sin. These girls, then, have obviously been placed in such desperate emotional states that they would rather risk facing the consequences inherent in this sin than the lifelong internal pain they associate with removing their scarves.

As one might predict, such intense political content can only be accompanied by an equal amount of overt religious themes, discussions, and philosophies. Greatly dissatisfied with life, not quite suicidal but bordering on such tendencies, Ka admits to expecting Ipek to be his one and only chance at happiness. Essentially an atheist, he also begins to "find God" in Kars. Along with many other religious overtones that I don't care to discuss, I found these portions to be quite difficult to read through.

Tying the political, religious, and psychological themes together is Ka's poetry. Having been unable to write poetry for many years, they begin to be "told" to him during his time in Kars. (By some higher power, he feels.) Although Pamuk describes the poetry and even includes an appendix listing the chapter/page # when Ka wrote all nineteen in his anthology, readers are never able to see one in full. This was quite disappointing, as they would have enhanced the story well. I guess Orhan Bey is not a poet in addition to being a novelist. As seems to be common for the author, Orhan is again a character in the story, serving as our narrator, a close friend of Ka's. It was nice to see The Museum Of Innocence actually mentioned by name here (Orhan says he discussed writing this with Ka shortly before his death), but for the most part, the metafiction approach was far less effective than it was in The Museum Of Innocence. In fact, I found the excessive foreshadowing and nonparallel storytelling quite disconcerting. It greatly hindered the flow of the novel. Some foreshadowing is great, but the narrator (yes, Orhan) does it several times regarding the same thing; other times it feels like he is simply giving away an ending that I, as a reader, don't want him to give away! One example of how the structure didn't work for me is the seemingly randomly placed chapter twenty-nine in the middle of the story in which Orhan tells readers about visiting Ka's apartment after his murder. This was placed between two chapters that follow one another chronologically. It was like being awakened from a dream and then reentering in chapter thirty. Not something I liked at all.

All in all, it was still an engaging read despite these issues. This is due to the writing. It is beautiful, proficient, and insightful, always managing to describe things with simplicity yet with depth of understanding. I'm looking forward to another Orhan Pamuk work, but this time I'll look for his titles that are less political/religious in theme.

Orhan Pamuk is not creating an original psyche in Ka. What he has done, rather, is illustrate it with language so melodious yet insightful that he might as well have.

Ka's nineteen poems, all written while he was in Kars, serve as a sort of guide to the narration.

"Ka explained that when a good poet is confronted with the difficult facts that he knows to be true but also inimical to poetry, he has no choice but to flee to the margins: it was, he said, this very retreat that allowed him to hear the hidden music that is the source of all art."

Indeed, Ka himself saw them as a guide to his very being, having divided the poems into the three axes of Memory, Imagination, Reason, inspired by Bacon's Tree Of Knowledge. At the center were the words, "I, Ka". This snowflake can be seen on page 261 in the text.

A final central theme of the story is that of loyalty and allegiances. Sunay Bey's loyalty to his true love, the theater, although he uses it for political purposes; each of the sisters' allegiances to each other, but also to Blue, in their atypical love triangle; Necip & Fazil's loyalty to their religion, as well as each other (gay?); even the not so obvious loyalty the citizens of Kars have to their city.

"Life is not about principles, it is about happiness," Ka states.

"But if you do not have any principles, and no faith, you cannot be happy at all," Kadife disagrees.

"That is true. But in a country like ours where human life is cheap, it is stupid to destroy yourself for the sake of your beliefs. Beliefs, high ideals... only the rich can have such luxuries."

"Actually, it is the other way round. In a poor country, the only consolation people can have is the one that comes from their beliefs."

The aspect of the novel I appreciated the most was Ka's transformation, really, from a depressed, unsatisfied man with little expectation that he would ever find a real reason to smile in life to someone who began embracing it. At least for as long as he was able to love Ipek:

"Suddenly, Ka realized he was in love with Ipek. And realizing that this love would determine the rest of his life, he was filled with fear."

Unfortunately, the contradictions inherent in his personality led to him often hurting the prospects for what he correctly deemed to be his one chance at true love. "Ka had always shied away from happiness for fear of the pain that might follow... His most intense emotions came not when he was happy, but when he was beset by the certainty that this happiness would soon be lost to him." Ka was a moralist who believed that "the greatest happiness comes from never doing anything for the sake of personal happiness."

Despite all this, he was able to experience bliss with her:

"As he and Ipek made love, he heard music play inside him, music he had never heard before, never even imagined, and it was by obeying its harmonies that he found his way forward.... From time to time he fell asleep, dreamed of summer holidays bathed in heavenly light... He was free, he was immortal; his plane was about to fall out of the sky but he was eating an apple, an apple he would never finish, an apple that would last for all time.... Guided by snow light and the faint yellow glow of the streetlamps, he would press his eyes against hers and try to see into them... It seemed to him they were two, basking side by side in shallow water; it was only then he realized that they were holding hands."

Now, who can rightfully say that is not beautiful?

Gönül desired that during a visit to Kars, I would read this book on an eastern express. Even though I couldn't do that, I decided to read it as the first book of the year to make it special. I don't know if this definition is correct, but in my opinion, it's a perfect winter book.

Kar was one of Pamuk's novels that I was most curious about. Since I read his works in chronological order, I was eagerly waiting for its turn. It didn't disappoint me in terms of my expectations. It's not a character we don't know. It has features that are very similar to Orhan Pamuk's other main characters. So if you're familiar with the author, you quickly get used to the main character.

Although Pamuk says it's his only political novel (yes, perhaps he's focusing on a political issue here and building the story around it), in my opinion, there's always a political background in all his works. The book was definitely prepared for publication as it was going to be compiled, and after being printed, a part of it was stored secretly. But such a situation never happened.

He is very successful in analyzing a city and presenting it to you. This is actually, in my opinion, his strongest aspect. When he described Istanbul, I thought it was because I knew those places that I was so affected. But he also created the same feelings for a city I had never seen before. I also walked timidly on the snow-covered streets of Kars.

In short, it was a good starting book for me. I hope the whole year passes with such satisfying readings.

Orhan Pamuk's - in my opinion - one of the turning points in his writing career, a Kafkaesque political novel that was published in 2002. Although from the year the book was published, Turkey's politics has completely reversed as an identity in a rarely seen way, it is a beautiful work to see that it has not changed much in terms of personality.

Literature comes before politics, let's talk about literature first. Although Orhan Pamuk is one of those who are not taken very seriously in Turkey, who are talked about a lot but never listened to, he has always attached importance to the work of analyzing, recognizing and understanding society, and we can see the traces of these in all his books.

I think we can roughly divide Orhan Pamuk's authorship into three. The first period, that is, the first three works, Cevdet Bey and His Sons (by the way, Orhan Pamuk started writing a political novel, and then it was left unfinished when there was a coup, and because of the coup in the book. I wonder how related it is to Snow), Silent House and White Castle are novels in which the author tried to find his style, and in these we can see that Orhan Pamuk dealt with Turkey's sociology in the background.

The second period is the period when he found his own style and my favorite period. We can see this in novels such as The Black Book, New Life, and My Name Is Red, and there is an experimental, challenging (in my opinion not, but people are strangely challenged) style. Here again, we can see that the East-West conflict is dealt with in a great way, and I think that without getting tired of this subject, Turkey cannot be understood.

The third period, starting with Snow and going up to The Red-Haired Woman, is the period when the experimental nature has decreased relatively, the language has become relatively simpler, and the issues related to society have been dealt with in a much stronger way. The Museum of Innocence is a love story, yes, but at the same time it is a novel in which recent history, moral rules, and being a woman in Turkey are also dealt with in depth. The Naïveté of Orhan Pamuk, which he said was "my first feminist novel", did not make much noise in Turkey, but it is proof that Orhan Pamuk is not only a great writer. The story of an ordinary grocer from Konya, that is, a conservative AK Party member, coming to Istanbul. In a period when the communication between seculars and religious people has completely broken down, no one listens to or understands each other, one of the seculars comes out and says, "I want to understand a conservative with compassion." How important this is will surely be understood one day, but this book definitely did not get the value it deserved. Similarly, The Red-Haired Woman also deals with the differences between individuality and belonging to a community historically. I think this is also one of the most important steps in understanding Turkish society. Because I think the most important thing that determines all our actions and ways of thinking is this distinction. The most striking aspect of the matter is

by putting Oedipus on one side and Rustem and Sohrab on the other. That is, it is telling that this is not a three-day matter. In The Red-Haired Woman, we also see the issue of being a woman in Turkey.

Orhan Pamuk has always tried to understand the society he lives in, and has tried to analyze the things that we create one by one, but also the things that create us one by one. Especially in recent years, I think he has been very seriously worried about this issue. I think Snow should also be read from this perspective, and if read like this, the book will get its due.

***

In Snow, we read about the poet Ka's sudden descent into the heart of politics, into Kars, after years in the West, and his struggle to find his way. He also meets with political Islamists and Kemalists. We also see how people join communities, and how easy it is to stage a coup. He sees both sides from the same distance, criticizes and analyzes both sides. And he reveals more of their inner innocence, their childish side. To the question of where the innocence of The Museum of Innocence comes from, Orhan Pamuk said, "The innocence of being able to watch television absentmindedly together, without saying a word." In Snow too, the torturer Mit'cisi, the murderer political Islamist, and the old leftist who has been imprisoned are sitting and watching that television, a pink series called Marianna. We can see their purity, their innocence throughout the book.

Again, we see the individual-community dichotomy, and I think one of the most important findings that Orhan Pamuk has put forward is related to this: Pamuk says that in Turkey (and probably in the whole world), believing in God is related to the worry of belonging to a social class. The answer to the question of how Tayyip Erdogan emerged from Turkey is related to this finding. It is also possible to interpret the issue of "updating religion" that Erdogan said in a more recent day from this perspective.

Similarly, we see the conflict between East and West. We see the things that happen when we dress the democracy suit of the West on a natural body.

I don't know how possible it is to understand Turkey without reading Snow. We see Turkey's hopelessness, the division of people and the reasons for the division, and the differences in the ways of looking at the world. It's as if all of Turkey's problems are in this book. There is still a lot more to write and say. It is difficult to explain Snow. When we read this book, we can understand why someone is a political Islamist (even though we don't use this term today), and we can do this even though we are very used to alienating some of them constantly.

Come, come again whoever, whatever you may be
Heathen, fire-worshipper, sinful of idolatry, come
Come even if you broke your penitence a hundred times, come
Ours is not the portal of despair and misery, come.

Inscription on a wall at Rumi’s tomb, Konya, Turkey.

Something truly strange occurred to me within Rumi’s tomb. I'm uncertain if it was a spiritual encounter, yet there was undeniably an eerie, spine-tingling quality to it. As I listened to the haunting Sufi music and gazed upon the richly caparisoned tombs, covered in cloths embroidered with gilded Kufic inscriptions and topped with enormous turbans, I had a sense of being in a portal to another world. I knew little about Rumi, save that he was a renowned Sufi poet, and our bus tour had stopped in Konya because his tomb complex, with its strikingly turquoise turret, was a must-see architectural gem.

Perhaps the long bus ride from Istanbul and the scorching midday sun made me light-headed and receptive to suggestive experiences. I still remain unsure.

“I don’t like this place.” The voice startled me out of my reverie. It was Orhan, our Turkish guide.

“Why?” I inquired.

“No. Not the Mevlana. It’s this place, Konya. The people here are fanatics, I don’t like them.”

Reflexively, I surveyed the tomb; aside from our group, there were surprisingly few visitors - women in black chadors, whom I was told were Iranians, other tourists from the West and Asia, and a few Turkish men in Western clothing. Some seemed to be praying, while others simply gaped at the tombs and the marvelously intricate decorations on the mausoleum’s walls.

Orhan followed my gaze and said, “Do you know that they have tried to bomb this place several times?”

“But why? Isn’t the Mevlana a famous Muslim saint?”

“It’s because of this,” he pointed to the inscription on the wall. “The fanatics don’t like this so they want to destroy it. Come on, let’s get everyone back to the bus and get out of this place.”

Three days later, we were in Canakkale, in a hotel filled with sunbathing German tourists, enjoying a glorious view of the sparkling Dardanelles. Orhan was chatting up a few scantily clad Frauleins. We seemed to be light years away from Konya and Turkey’s dusty Anatolian heartland. I wondered what the ‘fanatics’ that Orhan spoke of thought of this place, and how they could share the same country with their more secular fellow citizens.

Another Orhan, the Nobel Prize winner, tells us all about it in Snow. The setting is Kars, a border city constantly swathed in swirling snow, where Islamists, army-backed secularists, Kurdish militants, and leftists have been engaged in a grim battle for supremacy since Ataturk’s times. We follow Ka, an exiled poet sent to Kars to write an article about suicides among headscarf-wearing girls, who are prohibited from attending state schools and universities unless they unveil. In a short time, Ka witnesses a military coup, an assassination, a play that ends in a massacre, and meets the individuals representing the main opposing factions: Blue, the charismatic Islamist/terrorist, and Sunay Zaim, the actor/politician/staunch secularist. We might assume that the westernized Ka’s sympathies lie with the secularists, but no; he is apolitical; his real reason for coming to Kars is to see Ipek, a woman he has hopes for. Ipek, who recently divorced Muhtar, the leader of a local Islamist party, lives with her father and younger sister, Kadife. Kadife, to her secularist father’s consternation, is known as the leader of the headscarf girls - and also secretly Blue’s lover. Soon, Ka is drawn into a vortex of torture and murderous violence, and political as well as personal reasons ultimately compel him to choose sides.

Pamuk, who shares Ka’s westernized upbringing, presents the differing viewpoints impartially; all the factions involved are equally dogmatic and violent. The Islamists kill in the name of religion, while the secularists do so in the name of the Turkish state. They both believe in a zero-sum game scenario where even the slightest compromise is impossible. The result is a stark drama worthy of a Greek tragedy - and indeed, the pivotal scenes of the story literally take place on the stage. The novel itself has a stagy quality; some of the dialogues feel like set pieces and some of the characters are barely three-dimensional. I occasionally found the insecure, ever-doubtful Ka infuriating, especially in his pursuit of Ipek. Some sample dialogue:

Ka: “You’re here this evening, aren’t you?”
Ipek: “Yes.”
Ka: “Because I want to read you my poem again”.
Ka: “Do you think it’s beautiful?”
Ipek: “Yes, really, it’s beautiful.”
Ka: “What’s beautiful about it?”
Ipek: “I don’t know, it’s just beautiful”
Ka: “Did Muhtar ever read you a poem like this?”
Ipek: “Never.”

Ka began to read the poem aloud again, this time with growing force, but he still stopped at all the same places to ask, “Is it beautiful?” He also stopped at a few new places to say, “It really is very beautiful, isn’t it?”

Ipek: Yes, it’s very beautiful!”

Forget it, Ipek, you’ll never be happy with THIS guy.

The story concludes with a murderous finale, also on stage. Without spoiling it, I must say that I didn’t find the rationale for the murder to be entirely believable.

I appreciate how Pamuk subtly presents the issues in this book, which are significant and unfortunately increasingly relevant to the lives of many people, both in the East and the West. However, I don’t really care for the characters and how their stories are told. Pamuk never fully convinces me that these are real human beings rather than stage actors acting out the story. Otherwise, this would be a solid 4-star book.

Orhan Pamuk's recent prominence and the fact that he was nearly imprisoned in Turkey are by no means coincidental. His books, as judged by this one, reveal aspects of his native country that a semi-democracy like Turkey can hardly admit to itself.

Turkey, as depicted in Turkish series like "October," is a Turkey of a civilized capital, of beautiful, educated people, of women with passionate gazes, dressed in Versace, and of business men in expensive suits. It is a Turkey of worldly life and culture, a European Turkey - exactly the way politicians and residents of this country want it to appear in the eyes of the rest of the world. A Turkey that exists in fantasies, in some neighborhoods of Istanbul and perhaps nowhere else.

However, the Turkey of Orhan Pamuk, as he describes it in his novels, is the real, non-cinematic Turkey. It is a Turkey of the provinces, of tens of millions of poor, uneducated people, of massive unemployment, of bearded men who hang out in cafes all day and then beat their wives. And above all, it is a Turkey of political instability, violence and murders, of the eternal tug-of-war between Europe and Asia, between political Islam and the prevailing Marxism, between education and fanatical nationalism. It is a Turkey of a military regime as the only guarantee of a worldly and whatever legal state, a still underdeveloped and very unstable semi-democracy.

"Snow" is no exception - it is heavy, very difficult to read. The questions it raises about Turkey's national, cultural and political identity, about national psychology, about the character of the Turkish people and their vision of the world and the development of the country are extremely serious, against the backdrop of a lightly dusty love story. Questions that, judging by the reactions of Turkish society and the state to Pamuk's books, it seems that Turkey is still not ready to ask itself, let alone start looking for their answers.

And among other things, I say this only because this question has recently been discussed in the media, the works of Orhan Pamuk seem to be the most vivid opinion on whether Turkey has a place in the EU.

Edit 2017: Given the rise of Erdogan in the past 8 years since I wrote this review, I consider Pamuk's observations, as well as my above considerations about them, to be especially perceptive, not to boast.

Suffocating prose;

Monologues in spades;

Hard to understand without footnotes, which made me care less for the plot.

I have a feeling the English translation is not too good.

At some point, accidentally, I switched from a print copy in English to an e-book in Polish and the change in the ease of reading was amazing, something I rarely experience these days.

It seems that either the English translation is less flowing than the Polish one, or that the Polish translator took some liberties with the text.

Perhaps the English translator was too literal in their approach, failing to capture the essence and nuances of the original language. This could have led to a translation that feels stilted and difficult to follow. On the other hand, the Polish translator might have taken a more creative approach, adapting the text to better suit the Polish language and culture. This could explain why the Polish version was so much easier to read and understand. In any case, it's clear that the quality of a translation can have a significant impact on the reader's experience.

Ataturk's revolution, turned inside out. This is Pamuk's idea. Counter-revolution, experienced as revolution. Counter-reform instead of reform. The prohibitions are the new rebellion, the denial of social and public rights is the right for which one fights. Religion as the new bright public ideal. Secular society is the new oppressor, freedom in large doses blocks the mind and his heart wants to return to the childhood of history, when everything was simple, unambiguous and calm. The book is a sad harbinger of Erdogan and the unrest that accompanies him.

However, my style was damn boring. I don't remember a particle of the plot, so it would have been better if Pamuk had presented it as journalism.

Perhaps Pamuk intended to explore the complex and often paradoxical nature of historical change through this unique perspective. By presenting the counter-revolution as a form of revolution, he challenges our traditional understanding of these concepts.

The idea of using religion as a new public ideal and seeing secular society as an oppressor adds another layer of complexity to his argument. It makes us question our assumptions about what constitutes progress and freedom.

While the book may have its flaws in terms of style and plot, it still manages to raise important questions about the nature of society and the role of history. It serves as a reminder that our understanding of the past is constantly evolving and that we need to be open to new interpretations and perspectives.