Genre Fiction
![Orhan Pamuk - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B000AQ8TE8.jpg)
![Maureen Freely - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B001IGLNE2.jpg)
Snow
Dread, yearning, identity, intrigue, the lethal chemistry between secular doubt and Islamic fanaticism–these are the elements that Orhan Pamuk anneals in this masterful, disquieting novel. 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. Touching, slyly comic, and humming with cerebral suspense, Snow is of immense relevance to our present moment.
Editorial Reviews
"Not only an engrossing feat of tale-spinning, but essential reading for our times. [Pamuk is] narrating his country into being." - Margaret Atwood, The New York Times Book Review "A great and almost irresistibly beguiling . . . novelist. . . . [Snow is] enriched by . . . mesmerizing mixes: cruelty and farce, poetry and violence, and a voice whose timbres range from a storyteller's playfulness to the dark torment of an explorer, lost." - The New York Times "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." –John Updike, The New Yorker "From the Golden Horn, with a wicked grin, the political novel makes a triumphant return." - Harper's "Powerful . . . Astonishingly timely . . . A deft melding of political intrigue and philosophy, romance and noir . . . [Snow] is forever confounding our expectations."–Vogue"A novel of profound relevance to the present moment. [The] debate between the forces of secularism and those of religious fanaticism . . . is conducted with subtle, painful insight into the human weakness that can underlie both impulses." –The Times (London)"A work of artÉ Alternating between the snowstorm's hush and philosophical conversations reminiscent of Dostoyevsky's great novels, Snow proves a Étimely and gripping read."–Minneapolis Star-Tribune"MarvelousÉ as quiet and transformative as a blizzard and as coldly beautiful."–St. Petersburg Times"In Snow, Pamuk uses his powers to show us the critical dilemmas of modern Turkey. How European a country is it? How can it respond to fundamentalist Islam? And how can an artist deal with these issues? ... The author's high artistry and fierce politics take our minds further into the age's crisis than any commentator could. Orhan Pamuk is the sort of writer for whom the Nobel Prize was invented." –Daily Telegraph"Part political thriller, part farce, Snow is [Pamuk's] most dazzling fiction yet. One of the top books of the year."–Village Voice"It comes as no surprise that political prescience should be yet another of the many gifts of Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk. With Snow, Pamuk gives convincing proof that the solitary artist is a better bellwether than any televised think-tanker ... The work is a melancholy farce full of rabbit-out-of-a-hat plot twists that, despite the locale, looks uncannily like the magic lantern show of misfire, denial and pratfall that appears daily in our newspapers." –Independent on Sunday"Pure magicÉ Snow is excellent."–San Francisco Chronicle"‘How much can we ever know about love and pain in another's heart? How much can we hop...
Readers Top Reviews
J. B. MitraEmre Sahi
sometimes you buy a second hand book and it feels like somone color photocopied the while book and put it togther. Thi book gave me a similar feel. The book itself is excellent, but i did not like the print quality(?).
AliceAsylum
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.
A. J. Sutter
I usually don't bother to be the 90-somethingth review. But I wouldn't want you to be discouraged by more than 60 reviews behind mine that fail to notice the author's ironic smile on every page of this book. None of his characters escape its illumination, from the Islamist radicals to the Republican coup leader to the female lead (with her out-of-fashion belts and working class way of arranging bread in pyramids) to the urban intellectual protagonist to the author himself. The relationship between the narrator and Ka, the poet protagonist, shares something of that between narrator and poet in Nabokov's "Pale Fire", another book that many readers took at face value when it first was published. But Pamuk's is much the deeper book. What makes this a novel well worth reading is that Pamuk treats all his characters with sympathy even as he lampoons them (with the possible exception of the coup leader, a ham thespian who tried too hard to play Ataturk). As did Milan Kundera in his early novels, Pamuk interweaves the political and the romantic so closely it's difficult to separate them. But the end result is more politically thought-provoking and humanly touching than Kundera achieved. It's been a long time since I've read contemporary fiction with as much substance as "Snow".
NTillman
Orhan Pamuk is a great author, At times this novel reminded me of some of the great Russian novelists. The author creates great scenes where the snowy landscape itself almost is it's own character. You can feel the isolation and dreariness of this small Turkish town. It is a great insight into Islam both from an Atheists perspective and a theists perspective. The characters are all well developed and interesting. I don't usually go for poetry but the main characters poems are interesting and blend well with the story.
Roxy FairdealRandy K
A slow read. I was taking a college course on Turkey, and our instructor highly recommended the book, so I ordered it. But after something like 200+ pages not only 24 hours had passed and it was always snowing, and I just found it boring, in spite of the many "insights" it may have offered into Turkey , particularly eastern Turkey. But I admit that many others really loved the book.
Short Excerpt Teaser
The silence of snow, thought the man sitting just behind the bus driver. If this were the beginning of a poem, he would have called the thing he felt inside him the silence of snow.
He'd boarded the bus from Erzurum to Kars with only seconds to spare. He'd just come into the station on a bus from Istanbul-a snowy, stormy, two-day journey-and was rushing up and down the dirty wet corridors with his bag in tow, looking for his connection, when someone told him the bus for Kars was leaving immediately.
He'd managed to find it, an ancient Magirus, but the conductor had just shut the luggage compartment and, being "in a hurry," refused to open it again. That's why our traveler had taken his bag on board with him; the big dark-red Bally valise was now wedged between his legs. He was sitting next to the window and wearing a thick charcoal coat he'd bought at a Frankfurt Kaufhof five years earlier. We should note straightaway that this soft, downy beauty of a coat would cause him shame and disquiet during the days he was to spend in Kars, while also furnishing a sense of security.
As soon as the bus set off, our traveler glued his eyes to the window next to him; perhaps hoping to see something new, he peered into the wretched little shops and bakeries and broken-down coffeehouses that lined the streets of Erzurum's outlying suburbs, and as he did it began to snow. It was heavier and thicker than the snow he'd seen between Istanbul and Erzurum. If he hadn't been so tired, if he'd paid a bit more attention to the snowflakes swirling out of the sky like feathers, he might have realized that he was traveling straight into a blizzard; he might have seen at the start that he was setting out on a journey that would change his life forever and chosen to turn back.
But the thought didn't even cross his mind. As evening fell, he lost himself in the light still lingering in the sky above; in the snowflakes whirling ever more wildly in the wind he saw nothing of the impending blizzard but rather a promise, a sign pointing the way back to the happiness and purity he had known, once, as a child. Our traveler had spent his years of happiness and childhood in Istanbul; he'd returned a week ago, for the first time in twelve years, to attend his mother's funeral, and having stayed there four days he decided to take this trip to Kars. Years later, he would still recall the extraordinary beauty of the snow that night; the happiness it brought him was far greater than any he'd known in Istanbul. He was a poet and, as he himself had written-in an early poem still largely unknown to Turkish readers-it snows only once in our dreams.
As he watched the snow fall outside his window, as slowly and silently as the snow in a dream, the traveler fell into a long-desired, long-awaited reverie; cleansed by memories of innocence and childhood, he succumbed to optimism and dared to believe himself at home in this world. Soon afterward, he felt something else that he had not known for quite a long time and fell asleep in his seat.
Let us take advantage of this lull to whisper a few biographical details. Although he had spent the last twelve years in political exile in Germany, our traveler had never been very much involved in politics. His real passion, his only thought, was for poetry. He was forty-two years old and single, never married. Although it might be hard to tell as he curled up in his seat, he was tall for a Turk, with brown hair and a pale complexion that had become even paler during this journey. He was shy and enjoyed being alone. Had he known what would happen soon after he fell asleep-with the swaying of the bus his head would come to lean first on his neighbor's shoulder and then on the man's chest-he would have been very much ashamed. For the traveler we see leaning on his neighbor is an honest and well-meaning man and full of melancholy, like those Chekhov characters so laden with virtues that they never know success in life. We'll have a lot to say about melancholy later on. But as he is not likely to remain asleep for very long in that awkward position, suffice it for now to say that the traveler's name is Kerim Alakusoglu, that he doesn't like this name but prefers to be called Ka (from his initials), and that I'll be doing the same in this book. Even as a schoolboy, our hero stubbornly insisted on writing Ka on his homework and exam papers; he signed Ka on university registration forms; and he took every opportunity to defend his right to continue to do so, even if it meant conflict with teachers and government officials. His mother, his family, and his friends all called him Ka, and, having also published some poetry collections under this name, he enjoyed a small enigmatic fame as Ka, both in Turkey and in Turkish circles...
He'd boarded the bus from Erzurum to Kars with only seconds to spare. He'd just come into the station on a bus from Istanbul-a snowy, stormy, two-day journey-and was rushing up and down the dirty wet corridors with his bag in tow, looking for his connection, when someone told him the bus for Kars was leaving immediately.
He'd managed to find it, an ancient Magirus, but the conductor had just shut the luggage compartment and, being "in a hurry," refused to open it again. That's why our traveler had taken his bag on board with him; the big dark-red Bally valise was now wedged between his legs. He was sitting next to the window and wearing a thick charcoal coat he'd bought at a Frankfurt Kaufhof five years earlier. We should note straightaway that this soft, downy beauty of a coat would cause him shame and disquiet during the days he was to spend in Kars, while also furnishing a sense of security.
As soon as the bus set off, our traveler glued his eyes to the window next to him; perhaps hoping to see something new, he peered into the wretched little shops and bakeries and broken-down coffeehouses that lined the streets of Erzurum's outlying suburbs, and as he did it began to snow. It was heavier and thicker than the snow he'd seen between Istanbul and Erzurum. If he hadn't been so tired, if he'd paid a bit more attention to the snowflakes swirling out of the sky like feathers, he might have realized that he was traveling straight into a blizzard; he might have seen at the start that he was setting out on a journey that would change his life forever and chosen to turn back.
But the thought didn't even cross his mind. As evening fell, he lost himself in the light still lingering in the sky above; in the snowflakes whirling ever more wildly in the wind he saw nothing of the impending blizzard but rather a promise, a sign pointing the way back to the happiness and purity he had known, once, as a child. Our traveler had spent his years of happiness and childhood in Istanbul; he'd returned a week ago, for the first time in twelve years, to attend his mother's funeral, and having stayed there four days he decided to take this trip to Kars. Years later, he would still recall the extraordinary beauty of the snow that night; the happiness it brought him was far greater than any he'd known in Istanbul. He was a poet and, as he himself had written-in an early poem still largely unknown to Turkish readers-it snows only once in our dreams.
As he watched the snow fall outside his window, as slowly and silently as the snow in a dream, the traveler fell into a long-desired, long-awaited reverie; cleansed by memories of innocence and childhood, he succumbed to optimism and dared to believe himself at home in this world. Soon afterward, he felt something else that he had not known for quite a long time and fell asleep in his seat.
Let us take advantage of this lull to whisper a few biographical details. Although he had spent the last twelve years in political exile in Germany, our traveler had never been very much involved in politics. His real passion, his only thought, was for poetry. He was forty-two years old and single, never married. Although it might be hard to tell as he curled up in his seat, he was tall for a Turk, with brown hair and a pale complexion that had become even paler during this journey. He was shy and enjoyed being alone. Had he known what would happen soon after he fell asleep-with the swaying of the bus his head would come to lean first on his neighbor's shoulder and then on the man's chest-he would have been very much ashamed. For the traveler we see leaning on his neighbor is an honest and well-meaning man and full of melancholy, like those Chekhov characters so laden with virtues that they never know success in life. We'll have a lot to say about melancholy later on. But as he is not likely to remain asleep for very long in that awkward position, suffice it for now to say that the traveler's name is Kerim Alakusoglu, that he doesn't like this name but prefers to be called Ka (from his initials), and that I'll be doing the same in this book. Even as a schoolboy, our hero stubbornly insisted on writing Ka on his homework and exam papers; he signed Ka on university registration forms; and he took every opportunity to defend his right to continue to do so, even if it meant conflict with teachers and government officials. His mother, his family, and his friends all called him Ka, and, having also published some poetry collections under this name, he enjoyed a small enigmatic fame as Ka, both in Turkey and in Turkish circles...
