"Snow" by Orhan Pamuk

It took me a long time to finish this book. One because I was studying for GMAT while I was reading it, and the GMAT practices took priority, but also because the book is quite slow itself, probably on purpose, like the slow falling of the snow in a quiet mountain meadow. The title of the book in Turkish is 'Kar', the city in which most of it happens is Kars, and the main protagonist nickname is Ka. Take note of that if you are interested in symbolism, as there is plenty of it throughout the book, not the least being mapping emotions and poems to the axis of a snowflake.

Pamuk has been accused of being overly intellectual, intentionally obscure, too philosophical, combining too many things into one novel, not paying attention to character or plot development; and while many of these things might prove themselves true in certain specific cases, "Snow" is a marvelously written book and righteously brought the author the Nobel Prize for literature in 2006. The book is about a poet returning from political exile in Germany, becoming a journalist for an Istanbul newspaper which sends him in the most remote northeast corner of turkey, the city of Kars, on the borders with Georgia, Armenia and Iran, it's glory days long gone and buried in the last century when it was one of the southernmost points of the Soviet (and before that the Russian) Empire.

The city boasts many architectural remains of a better past, but they, alike the current denizens, are out of maintenance, made into something else, hastily put together in a hope for semblance of something better, but failing miserably. Snow starts falling the day Ka arrives in Kars, and the entire books happens in the 3 days of a thick snowstorm when all the roads to Kars are blocked and the outside world is locked out. Pamuk has deep love of Turkey and the Turks, regardless of their origin, beliefs, status or social standing. We see marching through the book's pages people from the military with strict secularist views, Islamic fundamentalist which do not shy from murder in order to further their goals and the Glory of God, former Communists and present Socialists who are not really sure what political beliefs they hold currently, small-time merchants, business owners, Kurdish separatists, secret police spies, religious high school students and plenty of unemployed, bored, future-less, hopeless people who form the amorphous bulk of the citizenry of Kars.

Ka also has a romantic interest in Kars, his old love Ipek, who is more beautiful than ever. Her former socialist father, her Islamic fundamentalist sister, the enigmatic and charismatic Islamic terrorist Blue, his little cohort of followers and admiring women, the mayoral candidate of the Islamic party, the failed Ataturk actor and his fat wife, who turn to political and military coup to end his not-so-glorious acting career, make the cast of the novel motley and drawn from every corner of Turkish life. The novel is written from the point of the author, Pamuk, who finds the diaries of Ka and re-traces his story, both going to Kars and to Frankfurt, putting the pieces together as he discovers them, leading up to the murder of Ka in Frankfurt, and unsuccessfully trying to find Ka's notebook with the 19 poems he wrote while in Kars, the first writing he has done in many years, and his last before his death.

The book might not be the easiest read, and definitely not an easy-reading novel with Turkish setting, but for those willing to spend the time, it rewards the reader with deep insight into the complicated situation of being a Turk in Turkey, on the crossroads between east and west, the only secular Muslim country but with a strong religious Islamic movement, the remnants of an empire, still containing many peoples and elements from all the corners once that empire stretched to, trying to look to the west, but not willing or unable to leave behind its eastern past, unsure as of where it stands, but still chugging along the best it can. 'Snow' will be a rewarding adventure for any open-minded reader willing to give it a chance.