Snow by Orhan Pamuk Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Snow
Book Review: "Istambul" in a minor key
Summary: 1 Stars
Having read Pamuk's "Istambul" without pleasure I hesitated to read "Snow." I should have trusted my first impression. He cannot write a novel: everything is a reminiscence of his past, whether non-fiction or fiction. His people in "Snow" are wooden characters. You learn little about either secularism or Islamic fundamentalism. What you learn is how Pamuk feels at every moment, and I for one simply don't care.Book Review: "They'll never be modern!"
Summary: 3 Stars
Orhan Pamuk's homeland of Turkey suffers the abrasions of existing as the rift between the tectonic plates of the Eastern and Western worlds. Snow principally succeeds in analyzing this tension; the local politics and the love story are coincidental. A grouping of epigraphs pinpoint the novel's main sentiment: "The Westerner in me was discomposed," from Joseph Conrad, and "Well, then, eliminate the people, curtail them, force them to be silent. Because the European enlightenment is more important than people," from Dostoevsky.
The conflict of the novel is embodied in the poet Ka's return to his Turkish home city from Germany. Central to Ka's struggle lies religion: "As Ka knew from the beginning, in this part of the world faith in God was not something achieved by thinking sublime thoughts and stretching one's creative powers to their outer limits; nor was it something one could do alone; above all it meant joining a mosque, becoming part of a community. Nevertheless, Ka was still disappointed that Muhtar could talk so much about his group without once mentioning God or his own private faith. He despised Muhtar for it." Pamuk's characters refresh the tired battle between atheists and fervent believers.
Ka's visit to the economically and spiritually depressed Kars is strangely enchanted. The city is blanketed in snow (a reiterated image) and awash in blinding whiteness. "It was as if snow cast a veil over hatreds, greed, and wrath and made everyone feel close to one another. They fell silent for a while." Rather than simply a sign of renewal or redemption for the town, the oppressive weather signifies a carnivalesque period. In a brilliant ironic twist, the roads are all closed and the town falls to a takeover by a "coup-de-theatre." Nationalistic actors and a few soldiers stage a play in which an actress removes her head scarf - not to cleanse it as the audience expects - but to burn it in an act of defiance. Religious youths in the crowd become boisterous and protest this blatant offense against Islam, only to witness some soldiers/actors fire rounds into the crowd. Based on the premise of the theater and a play being performed, the audience is slow to comprehend that the guns have shot actual rounds, killing nearly a dozen people. This section is a striking depiction of political upstarts, using the theatricality of the event to point to the absurd events. During the last performance by the troupe, the leader Sunay is shot, lamenting, "How stupid all this is! They know nothing about modern art, they'll never be modern!"
My expectations may have been inflated with the knowledge that Pamuk received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Pamuk displays ingenious marks of the great Russian writers, such as Dostoyevsky and Turgenev. Snow openly wrestles with ideas of freedom, religion, and humanity by employing similar techniques as Brothers Karamazov. Instead of the Grand Inquisition, we have Muhtar preaching on the tragic loss of identity in the East: `"But I didn't tell you this beautiful story to show you what it means to me or how I relate it to my life; I told it to point out that it's forgotten. This thousand-year-old story comes from Firdevsi's Shehname. Once upon a time, millions of people knew it by heart--from Tabriz to Istanbul, from Bosnia to Trabzon--and when they recalled it they found the meaning in their lives. The story spoke to them in just the same way that Oedipus' murder of his father and Macbeth's obsession with power and death speak to the people throughout the Western world. But now, because we've fallen under the spell of the West, we've forgotten our own stories...How do you explain this?"
Ka's poetry is incredibly intriguing. Nowhere do we receive more than several lines of his highly esteemed work. Instead, the reader is provided with notes from his journal and an interesting geometric figure - a six-pointed snowflake representative of his newest collection of poetry. Upon visiting Kars, his writing drought ends and a bevy of new poems results from the landscape, his conversations with others about God, religion, and love. The axes of this diagram are labeled "Memory, Imagination and Reason." It is at these termini that he organizes his poems into different groups and establishes the relationships between them. At the center is the seminal poem, "I, Ka," which is his European manifesto of individualism. Ka's solipsistic wandering across town and poetical musing, his attempt to possess a beautiful woman rather than love her, and the narrator's devotion to having his story told leave the reader wondering what else would Ka expect?
Book Review: A Challenge, but well worth the effort
Summary: 5 Stars
Orhan Pamuk is one of Turkey's most popular - and most controversial - novelists. He is often mentioned as a Nobel Laureate in waiting (and many rumours surround Harold Pinter's 2005 Prize in Turkey as a result), and yet he has also found himself in court over his political statements. "Snow" (in Turkish "Kar") is one of the increasing number of his works to find an English language translation.
The story deals with a poet (Ka) returning from exile to travel to the Anatolian town of Kars to investigate a rash of suicides by young girls. Kars, it seems, has emerged as one of the flash-points between political Islam and the avowedly secularist ideals of modern Turkey.
The city is cut off from the outside world due to a snowstorm and, as Ka wanders through a number of lives, the religio-political tensions manifest themselves in extreme and violent ways.
There is also a secondary plot, in which Ka attempts to win over a former acquaintance to move back to Germany with him. This is complicated somewhat by the position her family holds in the town.
For what it sets out to achieve, "Snow" is highly successful. The characters occasionally behave like cardboard cutouts, but this is predominantly a result of their position as representing an entire tendency in Turkey - Ka *is* secularism, just as the terrorist Blue *is* the force against the state.
Orhan raises many questions throughout his novel, and yet the fact that most (if not all) remain unanswered at the conclusion does not seem to matter. The reader is left to make up their own mind which path is the correct one - just as the Turkish Republic must do in the future. The novel, therefore, can almost function as a call to arms, although one for both sides.
On initial impressions, the dreamlike postmodern way of writing this novel is an obstacle, however soon the narrative devices stop seeming so precious and instead blend into the generally dreamlike quality of the work - much as the individual snowflakes often referred to blur into the entire snowstorm which allows the dramatic tension to develop.
Some readers may also rebel at the idea of Orhan himself turning up in his own novel, however even this is tastefully done and provides something of an amusing counterpoint to the omnipotent-narrator viewpoint most commonly used in fiction.
The only place where "Snow" is let down, and then only in a very minor way, is the translation. The translator begins with what would normally be quite a useful pronunciation guide for Turkish orthography, however the sounds are quite inaccurate and any reader attempting to pronounce names and places with reference to this guide is likely to have serious difficulty as well as being wrong.
There are also a handful of ungainly expressions used, and once or twice there are errors which detract from the meaning of the text.
The point of this review, however, is to critique Orhan's work as a novelist, which is first-rate, rather than to critique some rather inept translation and copy-editing work.
"Snow", therefore, comes heartily recommended. It is by no means an easy read, but very few outstanding novels are.
Book Review: A Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
"Snow" is a masterpiece. It is definitely the best book I have read since "The Kite Runner" and before that--"The Remains of the Day." I loved the way this guy wrote. Very detailed with lots of images. I felt like I was actually wandering around the streets of Kars, Turkey. What Hemingway did to Paris in "The Sun Also Rises" is what Pamuk did to Kars in "Snow." "Snow" also packs a powerful message in its story: the conflict between the conservative Islamic beliefs and the modern European practices. No wonder why some reviewers gave this book a negative reivew--they probably didn't like the author's objective viewpoint on freedom and democracy of western civilization. "Snow" reminded me of other great works of art, such as "Ikiru" by Akira Kurosawa (Japanese filmmaker), Kafka (German novelist) and Dostoevsky (Russian novelist). After you read "Snow," you'll know what I mean by comparing it to Kafka and Dostoevsky. It's a lot like "Ikiru" in terms of its structure. Both works of art are pretty much divided into 2 separate sections. The first part shows you what the protagonist was doing before he died. Then the second part shows flashbacks of the protagonist to help explain why he died. Brilliant storytelling. I highly recommend "Snow."Book Review: A Modern Tragedy
Summary: 5 Stars
The modern day friction between western ideals and fundamentalist Islam theology is presented by both the media and bloggers in simplistic "black and white" terms. Many stereotypes have risen because most readers still get both their information and their opinions from these sources. One side portrays the followers of Jihad as ignorant, excessively misogynist, undemocratic, and hateful. The other side believes that Westerners are materialistic, militaristic, heodonistic, and deserving of the 911 attacks.
Pamuk's novel provides us with a sane story of this strife. Unlike the stereotype in the media and blogger world, this takes place in the snow, not in the desert.
Pamuk takes time and care to develop the humanity of all the characters regardless of their side.
But, despite the wisdom that comes from this novel it is about a tragedy for all sides, and in this, it is a close parallel to the inevitable tragedy that all sides face today. The friction and the violence comes from the universal weakness of all human character regardless of birth or belief.
We should read this because the people who are on "the other side" are the people that we do not know. We do not have a relationship with them.
Pamuk helps us to build relationships with these strangers while at the same time, we are able to hold the values that we have always held dear. Yes, both sides have their manipulative leaders who use and abuse the friction to enhance their power. In the end, these leaders are cut from the same cloth regardless of their side. For, the rest of us who are not in positions of power, we pursue the ideas and thoughts that we believe will give the most meaning to our lives.
This book's truths extend beyond Turkey's borders, and unhappily its tragedy will never end.