Snow

Snow

By Orhan Pamuk

Faber and Faber, $120

Orhan Pamuk uses snow as a metaphor: it's pure and beautiful, but also a hindrance and a veil. The novel, set in 1990s Turkey, centres on a poet called Ka who returns home after 12 years of political exile in Germany. After his mother's funeral in Istanbul, he starts researching seemingly impromptu suicides by women in the city of Kars. In this crumbling area of the world, where Islamist sentiments are awakening, snow conceals poverty and discontent. Religion, politics and love are major themes, with Pamuk mulling western cultural imperialism and state abuse of power, among other weighty issues. Pamuk relates the multi-layered tale through a narrator sifting through notes Ka has written in Kars: he has an obsessional affair with a former classmate that sparks a poetic outpouring; and he meets religious, reactionary and fanatical characters, among them a handsome terrorist called Blue who was probably behind the murder of a television show host. A story that smacks of Kafka, Snow is farcical yet profound.