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kamckim's review against another edition
3.0
This book read like heavy Russian lit, which is not my first choice. Things I appreciated--being swept into another world. Authors should be able to make you believe their worlds, and I believed this one enough to want to go back to visit every night. The characters were imperfectly real, really imperfect--I think even more so if I knew that part of Turkey better. Also, it seems that Pamuk is using the sisters as a metaphor for the country of Turkey--desirable, irresistible, unattainable, inexplicable, yet somehow within reach and even abused and used by various warring factions as represented by the various men and their relationships to them in the book. But, yes, like others, I did wish to see the poems. I didn't find the snowflake metaphor/structure to be contrived. The name of the book is SNOW. I thought his thoughts on the formation of the snowflake and its brief, unique but also universal being were pretty dead on. If anyone presumes to think that at the core, human existence is much more, then perhaps this isn't the novel for her.
thegulagula's review against another edition
4.0
I'm not a poet nor can I write a poem. Hence, it was interesting to read about how a poet like Ka wrote his poems. How his inspiration came at unexpected times, during his commute, while he was walking, while he was talking.
Orhan Pamuk is only the second Turkish author that I've ever read after Elif Shafak. Honestly, I do not know much about Turkey. The language, the alphabet, the culture are all alien to me. I feel like if only I could learn more about the history and culture, I could appreciate the books by these Turkish authors more.
Reading Snow, I have the idea that Turkey is either one of two things. You are either a European or a Turkish. A Western or an Islam. An atheist or a God-believer (practicing or not is never the point).
You may not agree with all his thoughts but it is interesting to read about his thoughts on Islam and the Turkish. Overall I enjoyed reading his writings and the political situation in Kars, more than when he was touching about Ka's love story.
"I'm proud of the part of me that is not European. I'm proud of the things in me that the European find childish, cruel and primitive. If the Europeans are beautiful, I want to be ugly; if they are intelligent, I prefer to be stupid; if they're modern, let me stay pure."
P/S: Even after finishing the book, I still cannot comprehend why the girls in Kars committed suicide.
Orhan Pamuk is only the second Turkish author that I've ever read after Elif Shafak. Honestly, I do not know much about Turkey. The language, the alphabet, the culture are all alien to me. I feel like if only I could learn more about the history and culture, I could appreciate the books by these Turkish authors more.
Reading Snow, I have the idea that Turkey is either one of two things. You are either a European or a Turkish. A Western or an Islam. An atheist or a God-believer (practicing or not is never the point).
You may not agree with all his thoughts but it is interesting to read about his thoughts on Islam and the Turkish. Overall I enjoyed reading his writings and the political situation in Kars, more than when he was touching about Ka's love story.
"I'm proud of the part of me that is not European. I'm proud of the things in me that the European find childish, cruel and primitive. If the Europeans are beautiful, I want to be ugly; if they are intelligent, I prefer to be stupid; if they're modern, let me stay pure."
P/S: Even after finishing the book, I still cannot comprehend why the girls in Kars committed suicide.
dude_watchin_with_the_brontes's review against another edition
4.0
I would give it three point five if they had half-stars.
It was a really interesting book, as someone who wasn't very familiar with Turkish culture when I started reading it. I generally have trouble with novels where I don't like the protagonist, but there were other compelling characters, and the theme of deception versus reality was very interesting.
It was a really interesting book, as someone who wasn't very familiar with Turkish culture when I started reading it. I generally have trouble with novels where I don't like the protagonist, but there were other compelling characters, and the theme of deception versus reality was very interesting.
expatally's review against another edition
1.0
Simply can not put anymore time into this book. Normally, I wouldn't rate a book that I haven't completely finished but I'm 75% through and am giving myself permission this time. I can not figure out how this book won a Nobel Prize unless it is western readers' first introduction to Turkey. How disappointing, as Turkey is a fascinating, colourful place and so much more alive and multi-dimensional than these characters. Maybe, the starkness of the characters, language, and plot are meant to emphasise the isolation of the city of Kars. Maybe, the ambivalence of the main character Ka is meant to demonstrate Turkey's ambivalence as it balances precariously between the west and the east, geographically, politically, and culturally. Perhaps the translator is responsible for the stilted, simple sentences that may have sounded so much more lyrical in Turkish. I have no idea and have lost interest in trying to find reasons to like this book.
bookish_wendy's review against another edition
2.0
I wanted to like it. I wanted to get in to it. But it just never captured me. An author too ambitious? A reader too dense? We'll never know.
jdintr's review against another edition
5.0
One of my favorite reads of the year, Pamuk pulls back the curtain of the Turkish culture wars (Islamism vs. Secularism; Modernism vs. Tradition) and weave a haunting, fascinating story of a secular atheist poet who finds love and God, heartbreak and hopelessness over three snow-laden days in Kars.
blackoxford's review against another edition
4.0
An Aorist Country
Religion is rarely about dogma or belief and almost always about membership in a group and the feeling of belonging it creates. Snow is an absurdist novel about religion as community and its communal conflicts.
The protagonist, Ka, is a sort of thirty-something adolescent who finds himself in a blizzard, in love, in a state ruled by paranoia, and in the midst of a local revolution begun by a provincial theatre-group (remarkably like a Turkish version of Heinrich Boll's Clown). This constitutes his isolated but very god-like, omniscient community: "In Kars everyone always knows about everything that’s going on."
But Kars, situated as it is in Eastern Turkey, is hardly a single community. Its history is Russian, and Iranian, and Ottoman, and even a bit of English. Its inhabitants are Kurds, and Armenians, and Georgians and Azeris as well as Turks. And even among the ethnic Turks there are as many communities as there are distinctive interpretations of Islam.
Each of these communities, according to their members, is created by God. Various physical aspects of the Karsian world evoke God for the various communities. For example, “Snow reminds Ka of God!” Particularly its silence. But this is his community; mainly because after living as an emigre in Germany for so many years, he has no other. In Kars, he finds solace mainly because he has discovered empathy "with someone weaker than himself," namely the poor, uneducated, confused provincial Turkish folk. But that isn't how the locals see things.
The locals have a variety of religious communities from which to choose, ranging from radical Islam to secularist atheism. This latter term is not one of belief but of membership: "...that word doesn’t refer to people who don’t believe in God: it refers to the lonely ones, the people whom the gods have abandoned." That is, those who have no community.
Most of the local communities have a common enemy - the state. The state, since the destruction of the Ottoman Empire, has attempted to replace rather than include local communities within itself. But it is merely a source of what we have come to know in the age of Trump as 'fake news.' Moreover, also as in the Trumpian vein, the state is an aspiring religion, with the sovereign power that all other religions would like to have. It uses this power and legal violence to present a binary choice to the population: ‘My Fatherland or My Headscarf.’
The intractable conflict created by this situation isn't new in Turkey (nor for that matter in America). It existed even in the Empire. In part Pamuk expresses this through constant historical flashbacks and frequent narrative references like 'later I found out' or 'eventually we learned.' But he also captures the repetitive character of Turkish life through an ingenious literary technique that probably can't be rendered exactly in English.
Like Classical Greek, Turkish has a verb form, the Aorist or Habitual, which, although expressed in English, isn't explicit. The Aorist aspect is one of timeless repetition. It connotes past and future as well as present. The sense of the Aorist can be shown most simply in the crude English expression 'shit happens.' It doesn't just happen now; it has always happened and it always will. Turkey is the ancient, empoverished, embattled city of Kars, writ large, with its "endless wars, rebellions, massacres and atrocities." Shit just keeps happening.
The American version hasn't been written yet but it's long overdue.
Religion is rarely about dogma or belief and almost always about membership in a group and the feeling of belonging it creates. Snow is an absurdist novel about religion as community and its communal conflicts.
The protagonist, Ka, is a sort of thirty-something adolescent who finds himself in a blizzard, in love, in a state ruled by paranoia, and in the midst of a local revolution begun by a provincial theatre-group (remarkably like a Turkish version of Heinrich Boll's Clown). This constitutes his isolated but very god-like, omniscient community: "In Kars everyone always knows about everything that’s going on."
But Kars, situated as it is in Eastern Turkey, is hardly a single community. Its history is Russian, and Iranian, and Ottoman, and even a bit of English. Its inhabitants are Kurds, and Armenians, and Georgians and Azeris as well as Turks. And even among the ethnic Turks there are as many communities as there are distinctive interpretations of Islam.
Each of these communities, according to their members, is created by God. Various physical aspects of the Karsian world evoke God for the various communities. For example, “Snow reminds Ka of God!” Particularly its silence. But this is his community; mainly because after living as an emigre in Germany for so many years, he has no other. In Kars, he finds solace mainly because he has discovered empathy "with someone weaker than himself," namely the poor, uneducated, confused provincial Turkish folk. But that isn't how the locals see things.
The locals have a variety of religious communities from which to choose, ranging from radical Islam to secularist atheism. This latter term is not one of belief but of membership: "...that word doesn’t refer to people who don’t believe in God: it refers to the lonely ones, the people whom the gods have abandoned." That is, those who have no community.
Most of the local communities have a common enemy - the state. The state, since the destruction of the Ottoman Empire, has attempted to replace rather than include local communities within itself. But it is merely a source of what we have come to know in the age of Trump as 'fake news.' Moreover, also as in the Trumpian vein, the state is an aspiring religion, with the sovereign power that all other religions would like to have. It uses this power and legal violence to present a binary choice to the population: ‘My Fatherland or My Headscarf.’
The intractable conflict created by this situation isn't new in Turkey (nor for that matter in America). It existed even in the Empire. In part Pamuk expresses this through constant historical flashbacks and frequent narrative references like 'later I found out' or 'eventually we learned.' But he also captures the repetitive character of Turkish life through an ingenious literary technique that probably can't be rendered exactly in English.
Like Classical Greek, Turkish has a verb form, the Aorist or Habitual, which, although expressed in English, isn't explicit. The Aorist aspect is one of timeless repetition. It connotes past and future as well as present. The sense of the Aorist can be shown most simply in the crude English expression 'shit happens.' It doesn't just happen now; it has always happened and it always will. Turkey is the ancient, empoverished, embattled city of Kars, writ large, with its "endless wars, rebellions, massacres and atrocities." Shit just keeps happening.
The American version hasn't been written yet but it's long overdue.
runeclausen's review against another edition
3.0
Interesting novel, with a ever relevant theme, and a good premise of the rise of islamist powers in the far eastern city of Kars in the backwaters of Turkey. The book is full of drama and intrigue, as the main character, the istanbulite journalist Ka arrives in town to unravel a recent spate of suicides amongst young hijabi girls, but stumbles into much more encompassing issues out here in the remote provinces. The story has a strong beginning, but suffers from a dull long middle section, that failed to keep me too hooked. It does pick up again towards the end, but the very end does slow down again.
steveurick's review against another edition
1.0
Maybe it was the translation, but the conversations and actions of the characters did not make sense.