I have to say, I had never heard of this guy, even though the sticker on the front of the book says he is a Nobel laureate.

"Snow" tells the story of a Turkish poet, who uses his initials instead of his name and is known only as Ka, visiting a remote city in the mountains in the North Eastern part of the country (I did look it up in the Times Atlas of the World). Ka has been away for some years... living in Frankfurt as a political exile, but now returns to his home country, and takes a long journey by bus to investigate a spate of suicides among young girls.

At the time, the state has forbidden the girls to cover their heads in school, and those who still insist on wearing a veil are expelled. Suicide seems to be their only available protest, even though Islam teaches that suicide is a sin.

When Ka finally arrives at the city of Kars, it is snowing heavily, and of course the snow blankets the landscape, and muffles all sound. Humans are conditioned to expect sounds to accompany lots of movement, and this is why snow storms are so eerie....(like a silent movie, or a flock of butterflies). The snow constitutes the background for all the action, which is squeezed, improbably, into a period of three days.

This is a peep into the Turkey of the Turks, a kaliedescope of elements: the political instability, the divisions between secular and religious, the oppressive police activity, various militant factions, both Turkish and Kurdish, and the many & various different flavours of Islam. In the city of Kars, the newspaper is written the day before the news happens, and a revolution is launched in the form of a play... the theatre becomes a political instrument, art and violence are married.

I have to say that I enjoyed this book while I was reading it. Initially, I thought it was interesting but not gripping, but slowly the pace increased and it reached the "hard to put down" quality that characterizes a good read. There was, of course, a romantic dalliance, which seems unlikely in that society, especially in such a brief time span.

However, having finished the book... well, I found myself disappointed. The hero was not only not very heroic... he was a rather sordid, contemptible little man. In the end, he was not very happy, and did not get the girl. Good. I don't think he deserved her.

Nevertheless, it is a clever book, and I did recommend it to some friends. I think, though, that my judgement was more favourable when I was about three-quarters of the way through it, than it was by the time I had finished it.