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278 of 300 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"No one who is even slightly westernized can breathe free.", August 22, 2004
The rich story-telling tradition of the Middle East enlivens Turkish author Pamuk's novel about the residents of Kars, a town in the remote northeast corner of Turkey, once a crossroads for trade between Turkey, Soviet Georgia, Armenia, and Iran, but now a place of enormous poverty. Ka, a poet with writer's block, arrives in Kars at the beginning of a three-day blizzard, sometime in the early 1990s, to investigate a spate of suicides by young women forbidden to wear headscarves in school, but he is also there hoping to reconnect with his life-long love, Ipek, who is now single.
All the conflicting political and religious movements of the country are exemplified in Kars--socialism and communism, atheism, political secularism, Kurdish nationalism, and the most rapidly growing movement, Islamist fundamentalism, and Ka comes into contact with all of them. As he investigates the girls' suicides and becomes reacquainted with Ipek, he also witnesses the coffeeshop shooting of the Director of Education, the man who has carried out the government's orders to ban the "headscarf girls" from school. His assailant is a young member of the Freedom Fighters for Islamic Justice, a group Ka comes to know. A military coup at the National Theater begins when soldiers burst in, shoot randomly into the audience, kill a number of people, then round up "dangerous" citizens, including some of the people Ka has visited. Ultimately, Ka's life is in danger, and Ipek must choose whether to go with him to Germany or to stay in Kars.
Articulate in its depiction of almost inexplicable contradictions, Snow is not a western novel and does not adhere to western literary conventions of plot or character. The execution of the Director of Education, the army coup, and the follow-up are used primarily as vehicles for exploring the many competing philosophical and political movements, a focus on abstractions rarely seen in American literary fiction. The plot is absorbing for a reader who is interested in politics and religion, but the novel may be slow for readers looking for a plot- or character-based novel. The characters, while intriguing, are more representative of types than individuals.
Published in Turkey and Europe before September 11, the novel has an ominous prescience to it. Rich with insights into rapidly rising fundamentalist movements and why they seek our destruction, this haunting novel is many-leveled, beautifully wrought, and complex. Packed with ironies, dark humor, and enough symbolism to keep a symbol-hunter busy for days, this realistic depiction of the environment in which extremist movements take root and flourish is a chilling reminder of how the world has changed. Mary Whipple
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178 of 200 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
I challenge you to stay awake., November 11, 2004
Reviewers of Orhan Pamuk seem to fall into two categories: those who find his work breathtakingly brilliant; and those who find it distant, overly-intellectualized, and downright dull. As much as I'd like to belong in the first category, there's no denying I'm smack-dab in the second. This, despite the fact that I consider myself a patient reader and have long been fascinated by Pamuk's native Turkey.
The book's central character is a poet named Ka. Its setting is the Turkish frontier town of Kars. What falls throughout the book is snow, which, translated in Turkish, is "kar." Hmm. Let this be your first warning that you are deep in the throes of post-modernist art.
The plot of "Snow" is drawn straight from headlines in Turkey today. Religious young women, pressured by the State to take off their headscarves, are committing suicide. While Pamuk has plenty of value to say about this and other issues which define modern day Turkey -- on the crossroads of East and West -- the problem is how he goes about saying it:
'Does your father have to be out of the hotel for you to get into bed with me naked?' asked Ka.
'Yes. And he hardly ever leaves the hotel. He doesn't care for the icy streets of Kars.'
'All right then, let's not make love now. But let's kiss some more,' said Ka.
'OK.'
Ipek leaned over Ka, who was sitting on the edge of the bed, and they enjoyed a long and sensual kiss.
Hmm. Maybe it's not fair to blame Pamuk since his prose must first be dragged through the filter of translation. Is it really possible to create elegant English from Turkish -- a language rich in suffixes but dirt-poor in vocabulary, with paragraph-length sentences that run, from the western perspective, precisely in the wrong direction?
Perhaps not. But so what? "Snow" is boring. It's boring in the same way that "The White Castle" was boring, and in the same way that "The New Life" was boring (and incomprehensible!). And there's just no excuse for boring. Great novels inform -- but great novels also entertain.
This is not a great novel. Once again, Pamuk gives the reader a blizzard of ideas, accumulating to remarkable depth. But reader beware -- this just makes for a long, cold slog.
Note: No need to struggle with Pamuk's high art to get a fictional taste of Turkey. Try "Savarona" by J. Patrick Hart, "Blood Tie" by Mary Lee Settle, and the vintage "Towers of Trebizond" by Rose MacAuley.
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165 of 189 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
" . . . a terrorist is first of all a human being. . .", September 5, 2004
"One of the pleasures of writing this novel, was to say to my Turkish readers and to my international audience, openly and a bit provocatively, but honestly, that what they call a terrorist is first of all a human being. Our secularists, who are always relying on the army and who are destroying Turkey's democracy, hated this book because here you have a deliberate attempt by a person who was never religious in his life to understand why someone ends up being what we or the Western world calls an Islamic fundamentalist terrorist."
-Orhan Pamuk
Whether you are new to the writings of Orhan Pamuk or like me, a convert to his work in translation, you will find the book, "Snow," is packed, nay; overflowing with Turkish humanity. In Orhan Pamuk's self-avowed first (and last) political novel, the disaffected and somewhat anesthesitized inhabitants of Kars find their imperfect voice in his newest novel. Through mad-cap theatrical coup and broad, windy statements to an imagined and unhearing "Western Press," the reader is ingeniously treated and sometimes led by the nose through the complexity of an Islamic society desiring access to its past and admittance to the modern world.
Therein lies the rub.
Understanding is everything, although it can't immediately change anything. The readers of "Snow" will find many intricately drawn zany characters, who represent a spectrum of political fundamentalist Islam; adherents, admirers and detractors. All are deliciously served up on an exotic Turkish platter and are no less appealing for the remote locale of Kars.
As a reader, I am consistently amazed by Mr. Pamuk's stellar ability to give authentic, credible voice to a wide array of eccentric characters, each effortlessly recognizable for all their foible. There is also a remarkable, transcendent levity to Pamuk's depiction of what are deeply tragic events; a rather mystical take on the "ship of fools" theory of life. When a young fundamentalist student in the book expresses his desire to become the "first Islamic science fiction writer" it is a wistful, encouraging and poignant statement. The people of Kars do not by any means lack for voice. What they lack is a stable political vehicle that allows the coherent telling of their tale.
The varying degree of political involvement portrayed in the aloof dreaminess of love-sick Ka, ex-leftist, poet and main character; the complex hyperbole of Blue, fundamentalist outlaw, and Kadife, a forthright "westernized" girl from Istanbul converted to head-scarf activism represent the voices we don't usually hear behind the sad ubiquity of exploding bombs.
There are plenty of Pamukian literary devices in this novel that address the author's recurring themes and symbols. These have to do with questions of identity and metaphysics. Some note has been made in reviews here (USA) pondering the possible meaning(s) of Ka's name. I am told the author was influenced by Kafka. If readers of "Snow," desire a clue to the meaning or significance of the town's name, ("Kars") see the ending pages of "The New Life (also highly recommended)."
Every author has his own retinue of literary device and Mr. Pamuk continues to employ his own abundantly. The symbol of snow (in Turkish, "kar") is both tender metaphor and unifying symbol. Snowfall covers everything in the novel (and everyone) indiscriminately, possessing the miraculous nature of each snowflake's distinct design. Distinct design also aptly describes the Kars citizenry.
As I was finishing this valuable, well-written book, an Islamic faction in Iraq was holding two French journalists hostage, demanding that France lift its ban on the wearing of head-scarves by Muslim girls in French public schools. The underlying controversy of the book? A ban on head scarves in Turkish public schools by the state officials of Kars, resulting in a wave of suicides by young girls. Or was that the actual reason? Decide for yourself, by reading "Snow". One of the great fortuitous compliments I imagine an author receives (to his probable chagrin) is life attempting an awkward imitation of his art. (Mr. Pamuk began this book before 9/11).
Understanding is everything, even when it changes nothing. Perhaps it is all we, at times, can do.
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