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Snow

3.49 of 5 stars 3.49 · rating details · 16,628 ratings · 1,974 reviews

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...more

Paperback, 436 pages

Published 2005 by Faber and Faber (first published 2002)

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Oct 12, 2012 Hallie rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

After finishing this book I felt virtuous, relieved. Then baffled, irritated, and finally dismissive. Other Good Reads reviewers express the desire to like this book, but proceed to be confused, bored, and insecure. Most wrap up with the dismal feeling that they didn’t GET it, and so didn’t succeed in really liking it. I felt the same, but in addition was supremely annoyed and turned off by it. I’m not so good at post-modern fiction to begin with, but I decided to leave my bias at the door becau...more After finishing this book I felt virtuous, relieved. Then baffled, irritated, and finally dismissive. Other Good Reads reviewers express the desire to like this book, but proceed to be confused, bored, and insecure. Most wrap up with the dismal feeling that they didn’t GET it, and so didn’t succeed in really liking it. I felt the same, but in addition was supremely annoyed and turned off by it. I’m not so good at post-modern fiction to begin with, but I decided to leave my bias at the door because I had heard such great things about this author, and Pamuk didn’t seem like a bogus poser from what I’d read.
The story is about an expatriate Turkish poet named Ka who leads a solitary and arid life in Frankfurt and travels to a remote village in his homeland, ostensibly to investigate a spate of suicides by religious Muslim women protesting the injunction to remove their head scarves at school. He is really there to kindle a romance with a recently divorced woman he knew at university. The novel unfolds over three days when the snow has cut off the town from the outside world. What transpires is a coup led by a dysfunctional theater troupe, a lot of political intrigue, and much ball batting between secular and religious townspeople. Pamuk gives equal billing to every opinion, although they do not differ much in terms of their reductive, inflamed and binary natures, or in ability to capture my interest or sustained attention. This is in large part because the protagonist Ka is stunted,childish and infuriating himself, and the writing is both busy and detached. The political intrigue and opinions in Snow are not interesting or illuminating, as they do not emanate from fleshed-out people, but cardboard cut-outs spouting giant, densely packed and tedious word bubbles.
Inspiration strikes Ka while in Kars, and he stops to transcribe a series of nineteen poems, whenever they descend on him in perfectly realized form. Conveniently they get lost, but a conversation about them between Ka and his paramour goes like this:
“Is it beautiful?” he asked her a few moments later.
“Yes, it’s beautiful!” said Ipek.
Ka read a few more lines aloud and then asked her again, “Is it beautiful?”
“It’s beautiful,” Ipek replied.
When he finished reading the poem, he asked, “So what was it that made it beautiful?”
“I don’t know,” Ipek replied, “but I did find it beautiful.”
“Did Muhtar [her ex] ever read you a poem like this?”
“Never,” she said.
Ka began to read the poem aloud again, this time with growing force, but he still stopped at all the same places to ask, “Is it beautiful?” He also stopped at a few new places to say, “It really is very beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s very beautiful!” Ipek replied.
To my mind, only a child under ten should ever be indulged in this sort of megalomania, and then only by his mother, but Ka is nowhere punished, ridiculed or even chided for his insufferable personality, and in fact I think we are supposed to admire him as embodying the innocence, purity, pathos and single-mindedness that come with being a true artist.
Margaret Atwood says, in the New York Times Book Review “Not only an engrossing feat of tale-spinning, but essential reading for our times. [Pamuk is] narrating his country into being.” This seems to me the best case for why Snow won the Nobel Prize. The book makes Turkey legible, as well as digestible, to the West. The novel is chock a block with allusions to white western male institutions – Kafka, Coleridge, Mann, Nabokov (he wrote a lot of stuff in the west, anyway): an annoying and intrusive narrator, a novelist named Orhan, whose games of peek-a-boo get harder and harder to humor, an abysmal, abyssal usage of literary envelopes, a morose and misunderstood genius of a hero who falls desparately in love with a woman he obstinately refuses to lend more than one dimension – the sex scenes, incidentally, are some of the most unintentionally off-putting I have ever read, and recall the experience almost every woman has been unfortunate to undergo at least once, where she feels she might leave the room, go get some cheesecake and stand in the door frame watching her partner rythmically brutalizing a stack of pillows in laughable ignorance of her whereabouts or even existence. Afterwards our hero has the witlessness to add to the injury by calling this essentially masturbatory act “love-making”. In fact, this pretty much sums up my response to the whole book.

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Nov 03, 2007 Darcy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: twentieth-century-novels

(view spoiler)...more

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Mar 17, 2012 Nathan James rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bookgrouppick, ughmakeitstop, 2009

Nine Reasons I (strongly) disliked this book:

1. The author made himself a character in his story. I just don't like it when they do that. I always wonder if they had writers-block and couldn't invent a fictional character to take the reins.

2. Snowflake diagram of poetry. I'll say no more.

3. The main character is a whiny, infantile, grown man who falls in love with every woman he encounters. As is the narrator whose name happens to be the same as the author, and two of the young men who play hug...more

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Mar 30, 2008 hadashi rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This novel has won a zillion prizes, and has received deafening international acclaim for the way it takes on the clash of the Islamic fundamentalist East & secular West while retaining the humanity of its characters. I disagree.
The book starts out fine, but it devolves into this really odd stream-of-consciousness craziness that feels like a fever dream and makes little sense of events at the end. In addition, the narrator keeps telling you what’s going to happen – big stuff, like deaths, e...more

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Sep 02, 2007 Liza Bolitzer rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have to say, it's been a while since I liked a novel as much as this one and it's been even longer that I've had the chance to lie on a beach and read for a week, so I will say that you may want to take this review with a grain of sand. Pamuk reminded me of what really defines a novel, what moves it beyond a series of events and into a world and Pamuk's Kars is certainly its own world, full of characters whose degree of nuance is exactly as deep as those in a real place--in life you don't know...more

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Jan 05, 2009 Zinta rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read a few sample pages of Snow in the bookstore, drawn by its blurry, snowy cover; drawn by a recent New York Times review; drawn by its non-westernized roots in Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk; drawn, too, by curiosity at this recent Nobel Prize winner for literature. The first few pages mesmerized me, the scene of a Turkish poet riding a bus through the snow capturing my imagination even as I left the bookstore.

"The silence of snow, thought the man sitting just behind the bus driver. If this we...more I read a few sample pages of Snow in the bookstore, drawn by its blurry, snowy cover; drawn by a recent New York Times review; drawn by its non-westernized roots in Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk; drawn, too, by curiosity at this recent Nobel Prize winner for literature. The first few pages mesmerized me, the scene of a Turkish poet riding a bus through the snow capturing my imagination even as I left the bookstore.

"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..."

Snow never stops falling throughout this lengthy novel, and indeed becomes a barometer of the human condition. "Snow" is also the title of a poetry collection the Turkish poet, Ka, writes over its time span. A diagram of a snowflake is his diagram of his core self, with branches into imagination, reason and memory. As snow gathers over the events of the story, it becomes at times a blizzard, at other times a gentle white blanketing over a trampled earth.

Ka is traveling to the city of Kars to write an article about an epidemic of suicides among young Turkish women. As the force of westernization has entered the predominantly Muslim city, these young women have been "freed" to discard their head scarves. Their religious beliefs, however, are such that to bare their heads in public is more than they can bear--they would rather die. While investigating the suicides, Ka meets recently divorced Ipek, and he is instantly enthralled. The ensuing story is as much one of political rebellion as it is love story, complete with executions, betrayals, love found and love lost, and mysteries never quite solved.

I've grown up on European literature, with its dense and intricate plotlines, stories with no particular rush to reach conclusion and no linear path in getting there, in contrast to the fast-paced western literature with spare plotlines, quick action, and neatly wrapped-up endings. Of course, there are exceptions, but when I am in the mood to sink deep into a multi-layered tome, I choose non-western literature, and when I want a quick tap-dance of literary skill, I choose American literature. Each has its own pleasures. Snow is no exception. I enjoyed this blizzard, even if at times I lost sight of the path for all the white stuff.

Even the love story reminded me of the difference in the expression of love in different cultures, with Ka's falling into something nearing a worshipful obsession, immersing himself whole into the object of his affection--while a westernized love story would be more geared toward seduction and conquest, less about the dance of courtship and romance. There is surrender to the heart with nothing left in reserve in non-western literature that fascinates me. Do or die. Love or leave. For this reason alone, I enjoy reading literature by a variety of international authors; each provides a view into a varied perspective and life sense.

In any culture, however, the human heart breaks for the same reasons. We read of Ka's devastation at learning his beloved has betrayed him with another--from this heartbreak is seeded a suspicion of murder (did Ka or didn't he?). The scene of confrontation between Ka and Ipek is perhaps the novel's most moving: hearts are shattered even as they continue to find comfort in each other's arms, a fatal mix of love threaded with hatred, and finally released by the chill of apathy. Pamuk writes of the complexities of love as far more baffling than reason alone might explain, and each time as unique as a snowflake.

Snow is not a quick read. Nor is it an easy one. Like Ka's love, it requires immersion and a certain degree of surrender. It is a skilled and often marvelous novel, even if I am not convinced it is worthy of the Nobel. I would say not. Yet it is worth the effort to move through this snowfall, if only for the occasional moment of sheer literary mastery.
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May 05, 2010 Nile daughter rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: turkey, east-and-west

I read excellent reviews here ; which convinced me that I can not add any new ! but since I am a Muslim & An Arab ; I could feel a lot of the depth of this book which showed me Turkey with a very cruel -but caring- anatomy that even the brilliant sarcasm made it more painful! By considering this fictional book as a new and useful approach for me to what are not so far different wounds from ours ; I will write my words …

For me ; it is a magnificent novel , a heart breaking one ; discussing th...more I read excellent reviews here ; which convinced me that I can not add any new ! but since I am a Muslim & An Arab ; I could feel a lot of the depth of this book which showed me Turkey with a very cruel -but caring- anatomy that even the brilliant sarcasm made it more painful! By considering this fictional book as a new and useful approach for me to what are not so far different wounds from ours ; I will write my words …

For me ; it is a magnificent novel , a heart breaking one ; discussing the contemporary Turkish conflict between political Islam , tradition & even on a bigger scale .. the national identity - from a side and secularism , modernization & westernization - from the other side . this conflict was presented in the novel by fanatics from both sides producing a complete bloody chaos , with the poverty & unemployment as the main feeder for its continuity ! but this analysis - which is done by both: a political & a philosophical methods - was not dry , it Was sensed through icons ..people .. lives that I can feel , get closer to & share the darkness they had in 3 days of isolation to its extreme , Yes .. the main events took place in only 3 days ! so the novel has a slow melody , but even though ; it is full of unexpected turns !

with Orhan almost taking no sides .. no right or wrong , he let me assume what I want & try to answer the un-answered questions !

Orhan is not easy to read , I stopped at his intellectual conversations a lot ; doing my best to understand . I loved his characters with their human weakness , confusion & passion , I will never forget Ka with his loneliness & desperation ..regrets & his sad love story , or his words :
”Here I am , abandoned & wasting away . I carry the scars of unbearable suffering on every inch of my body . sometimes I believe it’s not just you I’ve lost, but everything in the world “

I can not stop thinking of Blue ! how much he angered me & confused me ! His statement :”When the Ayatollah Khomeini said that (the most important thing today is not to pray or fast but to protect the Islamic faith ) I believed him ” may explain the huge range of confusing contradictions about how a religion can be manipulated with ! I could not totally hate him nor avoiding feeling sorry for his destiny , because of the blurring facts around him that leads to the uncertainty about the other face of any coin !

And the most of all :I will keep wondering about Ipek and Kadife ; their weird relation! And the feminine role in general ; keeping in mind that the suicide girls is a main debate in this novel .

I think this novel will stay with me for a long time , just keeping me wonder & cry ..?!
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Feb 11, 2008 Erin rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Quotes:

"Immersed as he was in the dusky melancholy that had begun descending over the city, he still felt happy. A long procession of images paraded before his eyes as he awaited his next poem - a waking dream of ugly unadorned concrete buildings, parking lots buried in snow, teahouses and barabershops and grocery stores all hidden behind their icy windows, courtyards in which dogs had been barking in unison since the days of he Russians, stores selling spare parts for tractors alongside horse-...more

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Jun 25, 2007 Cecilia Baader rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: european intelligentsia

"The third act began with Funda Eser singing a folk song about a woman who'd been raped, an engaging number to make up for earlier parts of the drama that the audience had found too intellectual or otherwise obscure." And so with a single sentence Pamuk explains his novel Snow, last year's Nobel Prize winner. Snow centers on a Turkish poet who returns to his homeland to write an article about the girls who keep committing suicide in Kars, an isolated village far from Istanbul.

Kars is experiencin...more

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Dec 12, 2007 Stephanie rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I would not have finished this book except for reading it for the book club. I haven't been this bored by a book in a long time.

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Feb 17, 2013 José-contemplates-Saturn's Aurora rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: turkish-lit

Surah Al-Ahzaab, Verse #59
‘O Prophet! Tell your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks veils all over their bodies that is most convenient that they should be known and not molested: and Allah is Oft-Forgiving Most Merciful."

Ka is travelling by bus: a white scenario outside unfolds: it’s snow, relentlessly falling…and he falls asleep.

Ka, or Kerim Alakuşoğlu, a Turkish poet, returns to Kars, an old and small city north-east of Turkey. Kerim, a 42-year-ol...more

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Jul 22, 2012 Synesthesia rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Say you pay 100 dollars for good seats at a show. You're so excited and full of anticipation. You sit down in your seat and hear the familiar strains of the instruments tuning.
Only for the ensemble to sit, instruments in their hand doing absolutely nothing for 4 minutes and 33 seconds! 4 minutes and 33 seconds of COUGHING, fidgeting and someone shouting "When are they going to start?"
This is how this book is to me. You think it's going to be brilliant because it won a Nobel prize. Surely it shou...more

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Mar 03, 2011 lita rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novel-english, favorites

Apa yang menyebabkan orang bunuh diri? Jawabannya bisa bermacam-macam. Tapi satu asumsi akan muncul jika bunuh diri itu dilakukan secara beruntun oleh penduduk di suatu tempat dan dilakukan oleh orng yang memiliki ciri yang spesifik: perempuan muda yang berjilbab.

Kasus bunuh diri tersebut terjadi di sebuah kota kecil di Turki bernama Kars. Peristiwa tersebut menarik Ka, seorang penyair Turki yang lari dari negaranya karena ideologi yang dia anut: atheisme.

Pertentangan antara kaum sekuler (yang...more

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Feb 13, 2010 Ayu Palar rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A Turkish poet coming home after his exile in Frankfurt goes to a city named Kars to meet the woman that he loves (or to be exact, he is obsessed with). If you’re familiar with Macondo in 100 Hundred Years of Solitude, you’ll find the same gloomy and mysterious atmosphere in Kars. Although, Kars is much much colder than Macondo since it’s surrounded by nothing but snow.

So, this poet known as Ka decided to visit Kars so that he can meet this beautiful woman called Ipek. While Galip in The Black...more A Turkish poet coming home after his exile in Frankfurt goes to a city named Kars to meet the woman that he loves (or to be exact, he is obsessed with). If you’re familiar with Macondo in 100 Hundred Years of Solitude, you’ll find the same gloomy and mysterious atmosphere in Kars. Although, Kars is much much colder than Macondo since it’s surrounded by nothing but snow.

So, this poet known as Ka decided to visit Kars so that he can meet this beautiful woman called Ipek. While Galip in The Black Book shows his true love by roaming the city of Istanbul to find his lost wife, I found that Ka is a man who thinks nothing but sex. The only thing in his mind is how to make love with Ipek. He even sets up a plan so he can make love with Ipek while her father isn’t home (a barrier for Ipek to have sex with Ka). Ka’s sexual crave is also shown by some paragraphs that mention Ka is attracted to Kadife, Ipek’s sister.

Yet Snow isn’t just a love story. It also reveals the systemic oppression to the believers in Turkey. A suicide plague happens in Kars. The interesting thing is that all girls who committed suicide wear head-scarf, a symbol of honour (to the believers) yet also a symbol of repression (to the atheist). If these girls truly believe in God, why did they commit suicide, a great sin according to the religion? This clash between the believers and the atheists (represented by the Republican) finally erupts in Kars. A stage drama turns into a massacre, and wearing head scarf becomes a symbol of rebellion. And this idea is delivered gracefully by Mr. Pamuk. I feel that he writes this down without any intention to take side. He just simply wants to describe what is happening in modern day Turkey, and Kars is the microcosm of the country.

Snow is a novel with an idea that is relevant with contemporary problems. However, in my humble opinion, the weakness of this novel lies on Ka, the main character. He’s not a strong and decisive character, but as a weak and dilemmatic character, he’s not convincing either. I understand why the women in the story will fall for Blue (the political Islamist) instead of Ka. While the strength of Snow is on how Mr. Pamuk builds Kars with words. You can feel the atmosphere of loneliness and despair of the city. After reading Snow, maybe snow no longer looks beautiful for us.
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Dec 17, 2012 Jason added it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2009

In a way, the problems with Snow are not necessarily its fault. Plenty of books have done it before and so it is by now tradition. Yes, I am talking about it having absolutely no idea what love is nor how it is manifest. The poet Ka travels to the small town of Kars with the stated goal of writing about a string of suicides over headscarves by young girls, but with a more specific reason of marrying Ipek, a woman he briefly knew in school and who he knows is single and beautiful.

I get it, beaut...more In a way, the problems with Snow are not necessarily its fault. Plenty of books have done it before and so it is by now tradition. Yes, I am talking about it having absolutely no idea what love is nor how it is manifest. The poet Ka travels to the small town of Kars with the stated goal of writing about a string of suicides over headscarves by young girls, but with a more specific reason of marrying Ipek, a woman he briefly knew in school and who he knows is single and beautiful.

I get it, beautiful women are beautiful. So Ka falls in love with Ipek. Why is it that so many writers are wholly unable to distinguish between love and lust? Sure, there are notes here and there where characters seem to acknowledge this, but it is treated as so matter of fact that this emotion that Ka feels is really, truly love.

The plot meanders, with Ka wandering around the town of Kars, speaking with people about the suicides and also the political strife between secularism and radical Islam. Interesting ideas. There is some intrigue in hearing the two sides of the extreme, both woefully ignorant, but there exists in the town no real mediators, no one who is able to acknowledge both points with any degree of competency. Of course the idea is to show the breakdown of communication, which is noble, but the method is to have a mediator that is simply a bumbler.

Along side the lack of any real bridge to understanding and Ka's infatuation, there are the poems. Ka is struck by the muse on his trip, receiving 19 poems (apparently long ones because they are enough for a book) from nowhere. The work of poetry is reduced to the simplicity of inspiration. What a sad state of affairs for a writer to put forward such a silly notion. But then the novelist introduces himself, yes, a Novelist named Orhan, as the narrator of this story. He doesn't seem too bothered to draw from beyond his sources, dipping into their minds even though he could not actually, to present his story of...what?

Not to belabor the point but Snow doesn't go anywhere. I don't mean that in the wonderful sense of a book that moves nothing but explains so much. Why does Ka fall for Ipek? There is no reason other than she is beautiful. Why do the poems come from nowhere? Because they were inspired. Why don't the secularists and the Islamists ever acknowledge the other? Because no one ever says anything even remotely clever. I had hoped for some interesting showing of character, but was disappointed to the last.

Slow reading, a dearth of sense and a middling I don't know puts this book on the bottom of the recommendation pile.(less)

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Aug 08, 2008 Atalay rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: people who are interested in Turkey

It has been a long time since I read Snow. I think it was just after its first publication in 2002. I am a great fan of Pamuk. I have started to read it again after reading Mackie's comments on Pamuk. Mackie says that most of his colleagues and students in İzmir Turkey did not like Pamuk or his novels. They think that Pamuk is an Orientalist and represent Turkey just the way the Westerners would wish to see. I really doubt that. And then there was Zonana's question to Mackie "What book would rep...more It has been a long time since I read Snow. I think it was just after its first publication in 2002. I am a great fan of Pamuk. I have started to read it again after reading Mackie's comments on Pamuk. Mackie says that most of his colleagues and students in İzmir Turkey did not like Pamuk or his novels. They think that Pamuk is an Orientalist and represent Turkey just the way the Westerners would wish to see. I really doubt that. And then there was Zonana's question to Mackie "What book would represent Turkey well?" It is hard to answer that question. I would suggest Nazım Hikmet's Human Landscapes from My Country as a start. But again many Turkish people will oppose my idea of recommending Hikmet's work as representative of Turkish soul.
Snow again. I read th first two chapters in the morning. I have been trying to understand why he has been so hated by so many in Turkey, yet I have to remind you that there are also a considerable number of his fans also. When Pamuk was asked to edit Turkish daily Radikal what he did was to take his revenge from daily Cumhuriyet, Republic. His headline was what Republic had written on Hikmet when he fled Turkey. Although Republic now seems to be a great promoter of Hikmet in 1950s it had a different line. Pamuk implied that Republic has had an hostile attitude towards controversial poets and writers. Most Kemalists would hate Pamuk for, I cannot find and show it to you but as they claim, Pamuk refers to Mustfa Kemal Ataturk, the commander of Turkish Independence war and the founder of modern Turkey, as the Sultan, the padishah whose job was to scare crows, referring to story about Atatürk's early childhood story. According to that story which is known by all the primary school students in Turkey, when Atatürk's father died when he was a little boy he had to spend some time at his uncle's farm for some time. There he scared crows from the fields to protect the crop. The Kemalists were furious. According to them that allusion was an offence of unforgivable type.
Then in Snow he gives voice to İslamist women blaming the state and Kemalists of taking part in the suicides of the girls. As far a I remember Pamuk accuses Kemalists for dealing with things like turban, headcover instead of trying to improve the lives of those girls who commit suicides. I would like to know more about Turkish femminists's response to Snow. As one of the main themes of Snow is the women.
On the other hand, there are still structures of feelings which are neglected. Why do the men treat women so badly? What are the traditions and the logic behind all that, how do they justify their behaviour, traditions, discourse, culture...
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May 16, 2008 bobherzog zog rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

Again, Pamuk is dealing with the major issues of Turkey (and, basically, half the world): East v. West, modernization/globalization, the rise of radical Islam and it's suppression and possible role in democracy. Although, this novel features Azeris, Armenians, Kurds, Islamists, suicides over wearing head scarves, charming terrorist leaders and simple terrorist soldiers, Turkish nationalists and securalists, and plenty of murder and theater in Eastern Anatolia while dealing with the above-mention...more

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Nov 20, 2007 Saxon rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: people interested in modern turkey

Shelves: school

I heard alot about Pamuk. He seems to be gracing the A&C sections of all the periodicals that I frequently read. This has sparked an interest in him for quite some time now. This is the first novel that I have read of his, Snow was assigned for my Novel on the Globe course.
Unfortunately, Snow proved slightly disappointing. After a lengthy in-class discussion, I pinpointed my troubles with the novel down the three main things that can be easily summed up:

*way too episodic and often times feel...more

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Oct 05, 2007 علی rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

I won’t say Snow is a great novel, but it’s wonderfull, well formulated with a perfect illustrated description about what’s going on in such a typical society in our area. I understand if the situation is not very much understandable for outsider readers, but those who know the situation in our societies, and at the same time are fair and equitable enough, would probably say that Snow is a very realistic drawing of what we’re suffering of. I, on my behalf understand every single character in the...more I won’t say Snow is a great novel, but it’s wonderfull, well formulated with a perfect illustrated description about what’s going on in such a typical society in our area. I understand if the situation is not very much understandable for outsider readers, but those who know the situation in our societies, and at the same time are fair and equitable enough, would probably say that Snow is a very realistic drawing of what we’re suffering of. I, on my behalf understand every single character in the novel, even “Ka” whom like Nabokov, when he was 19th, “keeps on writing his solitary poems while he heard the guns and saw bloody fights from his window”! or when Necip (a young character in the novel) dreams about a "landskape", almost the same as Nabokov's (Speak, Memory).
I liked very much the allegory about the snow which in one way is as beautiful as God’s message, and on the other hand trap the small city, inclusive Ka, as tide and closed as the people’s minds, no matter what ideals they have and which ideology they support.
Apart from some small wholes here and there in Pamuk’s description about events and behaviours, (how the narrator could manage to know every thing about everyone, even some very private individual’s feeling), the novel is beautifully formed with different informations about so many characters and situations, unless Pamuk doesn’t tell us; in a city which is trapped in snow so badly that no train can leave and no car can enter, even the army is not able to reach the city, how people could produce food during 4 days!
می توانم حدس بزنم که این کتاب به فارسی ترجمه نشده باشد، چون اگر ترجمه شده باشد هم، دست کم نیمی از کتاب زیر تیغ سانسور تحریف می شود، یا بهم می ریزد. خواندن کتاب را به همه ی هم وطنان، به ویژه خانم ها، توصیه می کنم. یادداشت بلندی هم در مورد "برف" دارم، در اینجا بخوانید
http://www.ali-ohadi.com/global/index...
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Sep 08, 2007 Quinn Slobodian rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A tricky book, where you don't know if the things that make it sometimes trying are commentary on the monotony of the perennial uprising-coup-calm-uprising cycle of Turkish politics, if the things that make it sometimes saccharine are commentary on the tropes of Ottoman folklore, if the predictability of the male characters are commentary on the sad realities of the eternal masculine. It's devised to keep the reader at a double distance, told as a reconstruction of an author Orhan of his poet fr...more

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Jul 01, 2007 Tim rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is gorgeously written, hypnotic, and probably too long. Snow permeates the book, and Pamuk's descriptions have the effect we get from noticing that it is snowing slightly outside--we get a small, pleasurable jolt of surprise that pulls us away from the action briefly. Of action there is much. The characters are trapped in the city of Kars, which serves as an effective external mechanism for putting pressure on them to act and interact. The book starts to get really interesting fairly e...more

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Jun 20, 2007 Andrew rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A strange novel who's "failing," if it can be called that, may just be a lack of real ambition. The novel is written from a "once-removed" or reconstructive perspective. This is nothing new and nothing inherently to complain about, many great novels have been written like this (example: Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann, but that novel is written so because the "protagonist" is compromised and in this case taken by the devil, so a third party really brings us closer to the action). But here I'm not...more A strange novel who's "failing," if it can be called that, may just be a lack of real ambition. The novel is written from a "once-removed" or reconstructive perspective. This is nothing new and nothing inherently to complain about, many great novels have been written like this (example: Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann, but that novel is written so because the "protagonist" is compromised and in this case taken by the devil, so a third party really brings us closer to the action). But here I'm not quite sure. And again, I'm not sure if this is a "failing," but it certainly leads one to feel a bit disappointed. As many people have pointed out, it'd be better to read Ka's poetry than read this novel, but of course what he have is this novel. I don't think it'd be fair to say that this is simply a failing of the author: "he wasn't good enough to write the poems so he wrote this novel from a distance." That seems too easy, and after all, is Pamuk really felt like he should have written the poems he would have, maybe they would have been good, maybe not.

But instead we have an outsider looking into a sea of passion (but not quite blind passion). The town is full of radical Islamists, radical republicans, radical Marxists, and radical lovers. But they all seem to understand the need for each other and the fact that everything is political. The Islamic Students realize that they need atheists to run the state, the political showman need the Islamists to be "moved" by their work, Ka realizes that Ipek needs him to get over Blue, etc. In this world Islam is political and atheism is a religious statement.

The problem and issue seems to be that we are all more interested in radicals (be they terrorists, lovers or actors or poets). While nominally this is a novel about extremes, on closer look it reveals itself not to be at all. It is a novel about the social and political interaction of extremes. This is inherently disappointing, we'd all much rather prefer to delve into the radicals and read Ka's all consuming poetry.

(less)

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Mar 19, 2007 Jack rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Man, if I could drop a 3.75 bomb on this tome, I'd do it for sure. It was pretty uninteresting until the last quarter of the book when suddenly, Pamuk becomes this engaging, web-spinning, insect-sucking spider of a novelist. I just mean that it gets good at the end.

Pamuk describes things exceptionally evocatively and in the case of 'Snow,' it is actually quite beautifully executed. Maybe some people get dragged down in the descriptions (my coworker did, but she read it in Turkish) but they are...more

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Jul 15, 2008 Heather rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction

Since it looks like I'll be traveling during the book club meeting for which I'm reading this, I'm going to give myself permission not to finish it.

I made it half way through, but I'm not enjoying it at all. The main character has no backbone, he's self-involved and seems oblivious to the events going on around him (even when there's armed conflict and torture.)

It's as if the characters are on a stage declaiming their lines. The presence of the other characters is irrelevant.

The author mention...more

3 likes · like · see review

Nov 10, 2009 Nancy rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: award-winner, eastern-european, politics, translation

This book was a disappointment—essentially boring and the love stories immature. The most intriguing thing about the book was that he interjects himself into the novel at the end. Also that he gets by without writing poetry by having Ka’s manuscript lost. The motif of snow and how he maintains it throughout the book is appealing as well as the insight into Turkish culture. None of that is enough to overcome the plodding and drawn out pace of the book however.

5 likes · like · see review

Aug 16, 2010 Sandy Tjan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Pamuk/snowflake enthusiasts

Shelves: 2010, contemporary-fiction, ebook, pamuk

Come, come again whoever, whatever you may be
Heathen, fire-worshipper, sinful of idolatry, come
Come even if you broke your penitence a hundred times, come
Ours is not the portal of despair and misery, come.

Inscription on a wall at Rumi’s tomb, Konya, Turkey.

Something strange happened to me in Rumi’s tomb. I’m not sure if it was some kind of a spiritual experience, but there is definitely something spine-tinglingly eerie about it. Listening to the haunting Sufi music while gazing at the richly ca...more

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Dec 28, 2012 Chaitra rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2012, what-the-hell-was-that, banging-heads-on-keyboards, set-in-turkey, orhan-pamuk, religion, islam, romance-it-calls-itself-hahaha, translated, nytimes-notable-books

This is going to be a rant, even more so because this book is written by Nobel Prize Winner, honored for how he represents Turkey in his books. It made the NY Times Best Books for 2004. Where is the saving grace of this piece of junk trying to pass itself as a novel?

Ka, the pompous main character is probably the vilest creation I've come across in a while. That's an achievement, given how much I dislike most protagonists. This idiot is an exile, who comes back to Turkey for his mother's funeral....more This is going to be a rant, even more so because this book is written by Nobel Prize Winner, honored for how he represents Turkey in his books. It made the NY Times Best Books for 2004. Where is the saving grace of this piece of junk trying to pass itself as a novel?

Ka, the pompous main character is probably the vilest creation I've come across in a while. That's an achievement, given how much I dislike most protagonists. This idiot is an exile, who comes back to Turkey for his mother's funeral. Once that is done, he reveals his utter selfishness, and decides to travel to Kars. He has noble intentions - to write about some election that no one cares about and to examine the string of suicides among Karsian women. But his all-encompassing in-your-face obsession is Ipek, the beautiful woman who now lives in Kars, is single, and who Ka wants to marry without actually knowing her. Because you know, when your name is Ka, you think, "I can never fall in love with a woman unless I know nothing about her." He then proceeds to do everything in his power to fuck her, oops sorry, to "make love" to her, for example, sending her old father off to a potentially dangerous meeting with a known terrorist who he knows is being monitored by the state. But, what can you do, he's in love. And he will be so happy with Ipek, he just knows this! When they do "make love", Ipek looks a bit too confident - not fragile enough for our hero - so he hurts her. She, being the idiot masturbation fantasy (for the author as much as the characters, he even admits it in the novel) that she is, enjoys the fuck out of it. From there the plot devolves into utter stupidity, surprising me as to the depths it could sink to, considering how low it was to begin with. It's definitely deeper than the "true love" referred to in this book.

Pamuk introduces issues very early in the novel - covered girls, poverty, Islamist political movement, the craziness of the state, suicide. But these are just for show, and to build up to the 436 pages (in my edition) of the novel. Every time someone begins to talk about the issues, and gets in about two lines, the author cuts to Ka, who is daydreaming about the many ways he can fuck Ipek instead of following the conversation. If the main character does not think that any of these issues are interesting, why should I, the reader, care? In any case, Pamuk barely scratches the surface of the rich material available to him. For example, twice he paints himself into a corner pertaining to a covered girl's faith, and twice he uses the same out - I am not going to discuss my faith with an atheist! Pamuk cleverly does not write a theist who could drag this explanation out. As for the suicides, that's just a frame. No one bothers with it after Ka does some initial half-hearted investigation, apparently no girl decides to bother with suicide while he's there. Some investigative journalist he would make too - a more incurious literary journalist you'd be hard pressed to find. He just blows with the wind, and stops the would-be interesting plot routinely at least twice in a paragraph for the following reasons in any order:

1. How beautiful Ipek is! How much he loves her! How they'll be happy in Frankfurt!
2. How beautiful the snow is! I can hear the silence of God in it for the first 200 pages of the book! After that I'll conveniently forget that I had any dilemma about God. But, even then, the snow is so fucking beautiful!
3. Hold your military coup for a freaking minute! My brain is like an incontinent bladder and it's leaking a poem! Go boil your heads for ten minutes while I scribble this down!
4. Isn't my poem beautiful? Isn't it really beautiful? I'll put it down on the memory axis of my nice little snowflake, leaning towards the imagination axis. (Authors Note to the Readers: Suckers! Ka lost the poems!!!! I'll waste 300 pages carping about his poems, but I'll refuse to include them in the novel. Nope, not even the one that I say I recovered from a TV program. You can all go fuck yourselves.)
5. Ten minutes after 4, ah! Ipek doesn't love me! My poems don't come anymore! I want to die!! (Readers: Please go find a well, Ka. Ka ignores the readers, and goes back to 1 after spending a couple of lines on LE ISSUES!)

To get back to the serious issues, even if Pamuk refuses to, women in this book are portrayed abominably. Also, shall I dare say this? They conform to every stereotype the non-Islamic world has about Islam and women. There are only two main girls in the book that supposedly deals with women: Ipek - the paragon who everyone is in love with, and Kadife - her sister, a covered girl intensely jealous of her sister. They ultimately establish the view that whether covered or bare headed, woman is objectified. What's more, she's ok with being treated the way she is. Everyone seems to fall in love with one woman after the other. Ka is indecisive to the point that several times he wonders if he might make out with Kadife while he's mentally masturbating to the image of Ipek. Ipek seems to have one trait: her beauty. She doesn't have any pride, no matter how horribly Ka treats her (or the terrorist Blue for that matter). Her only moment of decisiveness comes because of a man. There is a lot of lip service paid to the fact that Kadife is very respected because she chose to wear a head scarf, but all this is undone when it is revealed that she did it to get into bed with Blue. Blue is a player - he sleeps with Ipek, and then two-times her with Kadife, then two-times Kadife with a random girl who's supposedly her friend - and all this achieves is that the women share some kind of twisted bond. Even before that, when she supposedly stands in a room filled with men and is able to pronounce something provocative and win the respect of everyone, she can only do so because she's sleeping with Blue. And when Blue storms off in a snit, girl is completely traumatized and regrets everything she's said and is willing to do anything if only Blue would speak to her! Some role models these paragons are.

There are so many glib pronouncements in the book that I would be quoting it in entirety if I were to comment on that. All the characters seem to be stuck at a mental age of four. But, I was disappointed even before I could read ten pages of this book with the poor language. I have no idea if it's something specific to Turkish writing or it lost something in the translation. These are some examples of what I'm talking about. Ka and Kadife are strolling around Kars talking about Blue, when Kadife says, "Everyone's afraid of him. We are too. These are the butcher shops." At another point, Ka is absolutely untroubled by the fact that he will fall in love with Ipek. In the next sentence he is filled with dread by the very same thing. If I made a drinking game of any of these words/phrases - "happy in Frankfurt", "Ipek...beautiful", "snow/snowflakes", "fallen in love with [insert female character of your choice]", "had a poem coming on" - I would have died by alcohol overdose midway through the book.

I could expend more vitriol on the book, but I'm tired, and my head hurts, and I hope I never remember this book again.(less)

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Dec 03, 2012 Chiara Baroni rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Neve è senza dubbio uno dei migliori romanzi politici che io abbia letto. L'unica nota negativa di questo libro è la traduzione, a tratti pessima. In ogni caso, siamo di fronte a una vera perla della letteratura turca. Un'opera la cui complessità narrativa si sposa con una magistrale descrizione dei personaggi e dei loro comportamenti. Senza accorgervene li sentirete respirare al vostro fianco: ubriachi, eccitati, delusi. Notevoli anche gli spunti di riflessione che Pamuk, imparziale, ci regala:...more Neve è senza dubbio uno dei migliori romanzi politici che io abbia letto. L'unica nota negativa di questo libro è la traduzione, a tratti pessima. In ogni caso, siamo di fronte a una vera perla della letteratura turca. Un'opera la cui complessità narrativa si sposa con una magistrale descrizione dei personaggi e dei loro comportamenti. Senza accorgervene li sentirete respirare al vostro fianco: ubriachi, eccitati, delusi. Notevoli anche gli spunti di riflessione che Pamuk, imparziale, ci regala: «L'Occidente può sopportare una democrazia conquistata da nemici che sono completamente diversi da lui?»

Siamo nella Turchia repubblicana degli anni Novanta e Kars è una remota cittadina dell'Anatolia orientale, specchio della questione turca. Protagonista incoerente e alter ego dell'autore, Ka è un poeta turco esiliato in Germania per ragioni politiche. Giunto a Kars durante una tormenta di neve, Ka è chiamato a misurarsi con le contraddizioni di una città «incredibilmente triste», segnata dal degrado sociale, lacerata dalle violenze e divisa dalle tensioni etniche e dagli scontri politici. Turchi, curdi, integralisti religiosi e nazionalisti laici si muovono in un contesto di lotta e indigenza, guidando il protagonista in una costante ricerca della propria identità. Una ricerca che ruota intorno al confronto tra Occidente e Islam, tra modernità e tradizione, tra ragione e religione. Una ricerca difficile e confusa, complicata dall'amore per Ipek, l'affascinante compagna di università che il poeta rivede a Kars e sogna di portare con sé a Francoforte. La spirale di vicende innescata dalla messa in scena di un provocatorio spettacolo teatrale degli anni Venti, Patria o velo, espressione degli ideali kemalisti, coinvolge irrimediabilmente il poeta.

Leitmotiv del romanzo, la neve – kar, in turco – continua a cadere indifferente, a fiocchi grandi, lenti e silenziosi, lungo «le strade tristi illuminate da poche luci al neon.» Perfetta sintesi del paesaggio cittadino, «le luci smorte di viale Atatürk» e «l'aria sporca, fangosa, buia e consunta della città» avvolgono la storia in un'atmosfera malinconica e suggestiva, che commuove e fa battere il cuore. Le pagine di questo meraviglioso romanzo mi accompagneranno a lungo.(less)

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Mar 30, 2012 Stefania T. rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

La lettura di "Neve" non può essere ricondotta ad un'esperienza letteraria finalizzata al tentativo di approcciarsi ad una cultura ed una tradizione di un mondo, quello turco e più in generale quello orientale, considerato dall'Occidente come distante ed estraneo.
"Neve" apre, sì, una finestra conoscitiva sulla realtà culturale, politica, religiosa, emotiva e sociale della Turchia, ma, da lettrice, ho avuto la sensazione che... Non fosse questo il punto. Che, in realtà, Pamuk non stesse cercando...more

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Jun 14, 2012 Michiyo 'jia' Fujiwara rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: asian-literature, middle-eastern-fiction, historical-fiction, thriller, realisme-magis, ebook, novel-dewasa, european-literature, orhan-pamuk

Lagi, kisah tentang benturan peradaban: timur dan barat. Setelah karya yang sebelumnya dengan friksi yang sama My Name is Red. Snow adalah buku yang dipersembahkan Orhan Pamuk secara pribadi untuk putrinya; Rüya.

Salju..
mengingatkan saya kepada Tuhan,
mengingatkan saya pada keindahan dan kemisteriusan makhluk hidup,
pada kebahagian yang paling asasi, yaitu kehidupan.

Salju..
mempersatukan umat manusia.
seolah-olah menjadi selimut yang menyelumbungi kebencian,
keserakahan, dan kemarahan,
dan membuat...more

2 likes · like · see review

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About Orhan Pamuk

Ferit Orhan Pamuk is a Nobel Prize-winning Turkish novelist. Pamuk is often regarded as a post-modern writer. As one of Turkey's most prominent novelists, his work has been translated into more than forty languages. He is the recipient of numerous national and international literary awards. He was the first Turkish person awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on October 12, 2006, commended for bei...more

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“How much can we ever know about the love and pain in another heart? How much can we hope to understand those who have suffered deeper anguish, greater deprivation, and more crushing disappointments than we ourselves have known?” — 217 people liked it

“There are two kind of men,' said Ka, in a didatic voice. 'The first kind does not fall in love until he's seen how the girls eats a sandwich, how she combs her hair, what sort of nonsense she cares about, why she's angry at her father, and what sort of stories people tell about her. The second type of man -- and I am in this category -- can fall in love with a woman only if he knows next to nothing about her.” — 89 people liked it

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