The profundity is daunting – at times one can do little more than just admire. It was the same with My Name is Red, one of Pamuk’s earlier masterpieces. Therefore the distinction of the Nobel Laureate, which came to him in October 2006, is no surprise. One is left with the feeling that it requires a sensibility as deep and intense as Pamuk’s to know that “ it snows only once in our dreams.” This is a line that will stay with us forever.

Everything in the novel is very deep seated – the imagery, emotions, conflicts, causes. Like the layers of snow which falls gently yet menacingly on Kars, shutting it out from the rest of the world, each of these aspects creates a multileveled impact on the reader.

The municipal elections and suicide by the ‘headscarf’ girls - that Ka is commissioned to cover for an Istanbul newspaper– ensnares him into a maze of circumstances that becomes increasingly complex and relentless. The pages come alive with characters that are true to the world to which they belong. That is not to say that they are ‘types’ even though some like Sunay Ziam and Funda Eser get farcical occasionally with their posturing and rhetoric. Blue, the radical is a familiar figure – he could have masterminded any of the terror strikes that have made the headlines. But Pamuk lends him a lot of charm and subtlety. The women Ipek and Kadiffe fluctuate between varying degrees of optimism, vulnerability and melancholia – and this makes them genuine in their context. Pamuk could have done no better.

The author’s role in the story is fascinating. He is a friend of Ka “knowing everything”. One frowns for a moment –wonders why this dated mode of story telling. But towards the end of the novel, one respects Pamuk’s decision. None but the author himself could have taken the story forward with such credibility after Ka is shot dead in the streets of Frankfurt – precisely after 4 years of his visit to Kars..

Coming to terms with the macabre reality in Kars is a challenge for Ka as much as it is for the reader. Ka “ succumbs to optimism” and chooses to visit, as a journalist, this “poorest and most overlooked corner of Turkey” which had brought him “peace of mind” as a child.

The reader who is no stranger to the growing divide between secularist and fundamentalists; military and the civil; democracy and dogma - thanks to contemporary world affairs – is actually pushed to the limit. And anybody who has read the book would know that it is no ordinary experience. Pamuk makes no concessions in reviewing the past or the present – even if it costs him the ire of the powers that be in his part of the world.

Pamuk’s protagonist stands out in his loneliness which is at times is reminiscent of Dostoevsky and Joyce He suffers from a sense of guilt – at having become the Westerner in exile; at having lost confidence in the causes he started out with. Simultaneously there is this need to be happy which is a remote possibility. He tries to find consolation in love but that eludes him. He dies as he lives, in self-doubt. He finds redemption is his creativity – his poems.

Recurring images of the snow, black dogs, television, teahouses strikes a chord with the theme of the novel – the futility of terror and strife and what it can do to the human race. This also helps to augment Pamuk’s style, which never slips from its grandeur – even when it seems that he has no hope left for the world he is talking about.

In spite of the volume and severity of events that the author packs into a timeline of a few days, he is never found racing. Snow moves at a pace that allows the drama to invade as deep as it should, giving every opportunity to feel the anguish and awe that is born out of it.

A parting note, kudos to Maureen Freely for such a sincere act of translation. I will never get close to the original but what I have gathered by virtue of the translator has made me rich!

	Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul in 1952 and grew up in a large family similar to those, which he describes in his novels Cevdet Bey and His Sons and The Black Book, in the wealthy westernized district of Nisantasi. As he writes in his autobiographical book Istanbul, from his childhood until the age of 22 he devoted himself largely to painting and dreamed of becoming an artist. After graduating from the secular American Robert College in Istanbul, he studied architecture at Istanbul Technical University for three years, but abandoned the course when he gave up his ambition to
become an architect and artist. He went on to graduate in journalism from Istanbul University, but never worked as a journalist. At the age of 23 Pamuk decided to become a novelist, and giving up everything else retreated into his flat and began to write. Click here to read the complete Author Profile.

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Review by Aditi Basu
Designed by Subhadip Mukherjee