Snow — Orhan Pamuk
Snow
Orhan PamukPenguin Books
Snow
Orhan PamukReturning to Turkey from exile in the West the secular poet Ka is driven by curiosity to investigate a surprising wave of suicides among religious girls forbidden by the government to wear their head scarves in school But the epicentre of the suicides the bleak impoverished border city of Kars is also home to the beautiful Ipek a friend of Ka s youth whom he has never forgotten and whose spirited younger sister is a leader of the rebellious schoolgirls As a fierce snowstorm descends cutting them off from the world violence between the military and local Islamic radicals begins to explode and Ka finds his sympathies drawn in unexpected and dramatic directions
FABER AND FABER
The year is 1992 Ka a poet and political exile returns to Turkey as a journalist assigned to write an investigative piece about troubling events in the small and mysterious city of Kars near the Armenian border The snow is falling fast as Ka arrives and soon all roads are closed He discovers a city plagued by a suicide epidemic amongst young women and where the Islamists are poised to win the municipal elections If he wants to understand what s happened to this part of the world during his absence this is the place to begin But the rogue coup that unfolds before his eyes over the next three days tells him far more than he wants to know He sees a city wasting away under the shadow of Europe consumed by religious and political conspiracies and haunted by the silences of its own history Snow angered Islamists and westernised Turks alike when it came out in early 2002 and promptly sold more than 100 000 copies A spectacular tour de force it evokes the spiritual fragility of the non western world its ambivalence about the godless West and its fury