Snow (Hardcover)

Pamuk has attempted to present us with all three options in one. The reader is exposed to a panoramic view of Turkey's political and religious conflicts and ethnic tensions. His multitude of characters represents every conceivable strand of Turkish society: Atatürk secularism and pro-European modernism on the one hand and various religious factions of Muslim faith on the other. By compressing the events into one locale, a remote, poor and backward town, Kars, in Eastern Turkey, he creates a charged playing field. A major snowstorm has cut off the access roads to the town, bringing the conflicting positions to boiling point. A couple of murders occur. The mayoral election, which would have been won by an Islamist over a local Secularist, is cut short by a military coup. In addition, the town has become notorious in the Istanbul headlines for several suicides and suicide attempts by the so-called "headscarf girls". The assumption being that the girls decided to end their life because they were not allowed to wear their headscarf in school. Yet, their motivations are more complicated than that.

Within this complex political turmoil, wanders Ka, the protagonist of the story. A recently unproductive poet, he returned from Germany to attend his mother's funeral. He has also reasons for coming to Kars. Presenting himself as a journalist, he claims to be interested in the stories behind the headscarf girls' suicides. On a personal level, he wants to find a "Turkish girl" to marry and take back to Germany. The object of his dreams and desire is Ipek, a young woman he admired during their student days and who now lives in Kars.

The story is told by Orhan, a close friend of Ka, four years after the events in Kars. Orhan travels to the town to retrace Ka's steps, to find his notebook with the poems and also to shed light on the political dramas of the day. In many ways he describes Ka as a somewhat confused, middle-aged man, whose exposure to the realities of Kars result in his questioning his life so far. He is taking in all political and religious positions, getting increasingly entangled as events unfold. Wanting to please his various interlocutors, he appears to flip-flop his own positions. In discussions with religious leaders he even wavers in his secular beliefs and appears to be overwhelmed by a sudden spurt of poems that come to him as through some "divine channel".

While going into minute, sometimes tedious, detail in defining time and place, the activities are increasingly repetitive and predictable. The characters, despite being given ample dialogue are not convincing and the rationale for some of their actions seems almost farcical. The newspaper editor who pre-empts the next day's news headlines, the theatre director/actor and his belly-dancing companion who play leading roles in the secularist movement. Nobody is quite what they want or appear to be. The women, in particular, despite their importance for Ka, are hollow. His love for Ipek is not based in reality but rather on his daydreams, both past and future. Her beauty is praised constantly, but nothing much of her character is revealed.

Pamuk himself described "Snow" as a political novel. Is it convincing in that ambition? For the reader who is not that familiar with Turkey or its language, it is difficult to judge its value in this category. My own interpretation is that Pamuk created a satire on Turkey and its historical and present-day problems. The exaggeration in the description of Kars, political intrigues, religious fanaticism, military brutality, and Ka's own personality would lead to that assessment.

The narrator, Orhan, interjects his own 20-20-hindsight vision of Ka in his interactions with the other protagonists of the story. Several times, he addresses the reader directly and, halfway through the book, reveals what happens to Ka after his return to Germany. An all-knowing narrator can be an effective technique in a story, but it is not very successful here. Rather than complementing the reader's understanding, Orhan competes with his friend for their attention. The result is a strange mix of over-detailed reporting on the events and circumstances in Kars during the snow storm and very generalized, almost philosophical commentary on love, poetry, happiness in which the character Ka is embedded. [Friederike Knabe]

But this is a novel, not a political tract and Pamuk also manages to invest his vast array of characters and opinions with faces and feelings. They are by turns fleshly, lustful, attractive, impetuous, wise, irrational, outrageous, subversive, camp, theatrical, etc. The whole piece is enclosed by the snow of the title which envelops and isolates this colourful gallery of (largely) misfits and the remote town in which the events recounted take place. This piece of symbolism certainly gives the book its distinctive colouring.

It is perhaps post-modern in an unnecessarily convoluted way. The book is about the poet, Ka, and is largely seen from his point of view. But it purports to be written by Orhan, a close friend of Ka, who may or may not be the same Orhan who actually wrote the book. Confusing or what? Helpful to understanding it all? Not particularly.

The other major cop-out is the failure (plotted into the story, it's true) to reproduce any of Ka's poems, a major clearing of writers' block which is supposedly sparked by his visit to the town.

Having aired those gripes, I would still maintain that this is a good read as well as being a salutary one. The characters are rich and varied, the plotting is involving, the political and religious dilemmas and dichotomies it presents are fascinating and important. Turkey sits, as it has through history, at the meeting-point of Europe and Asia. This novel gives a strongly limned portrait of this Janus nation as well as a fine picture of its characters as more universal human beings.