Snow

by Orhan Pamuk

Here, perhaps, we have arrived at the heart of our story. How much can we ever know about the love and pain in another’s 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? Even if the world’s rich and powerful were to put themselves in the shoes of the rest, how much would they really understand the wretched millions suffering around them? So it is when Orhan the novelist peers into the dark corners of his poet friend’s difficult and painful life: How much can he really see? All my life I’ve felt as lost and lonely as a wounded animal [Ka wrote]. Perhaps if I hadn’t embraced you with such violence, I wouldn’t have angered you so much, and I might not have undone the work of twelve years, ending up exactly where I started. But here I am, abandoned and wasting away; I carry the scars of my unbearable suffering on every inch of my body. Sometimes I think it’s not just you I’ve lost, but that I’ve lost everything in the world. Could the mere act of my reading these words ensure that I understood them?

this is brilliant