BOOK REVIEW ; SNOW

Title : Snow

Author : Orhan Pamuk

Whoever reading enthusiast has heard of Pamuk, and hasn't read his My Name is Red?

Me.

His literary fame was enough for me to pick up his book in the Strand (oh how I miss the rows of second hand books on the New York pavement!) and stash it for "future" use.

Listless with the dismal life I am now leading at home, and missing seeing snowflakes fall on the ground, I figured out "future" in Pamuk's case is now.

This book, translated from Turkish tells about the life of a political exile poet nicknamed Ka and his struggle in finding his own voice back. Having sought asylum in Frankfurt, Ka came back to Istanbul for his mother's funeral and found Turkey same yet somewhat changed; he wanted his childhood memories back. Better yet, he wanted to relive it.

Driven by this and the urging of a friend to discover a lost schoolmate, Ka travelled to Kars, a forgotten Turkish town near the Armenian border where snow, suicide girls, religious freedom, a coup, and a beautiful woman held him back.

Desperate to find meaning in the topsy turvy of sleepy Kars while waiting for the roads to reopen, Ka experienced more emotions than he had for years. Poems flow out of him incessantly, he felt moved by the slightest event, and Ipek, the lost schoolmate beguiled his heart and soul. Terrified of the revelations he experiences, Ka tried to make the best out of the situation; taking sides in the coup and at last, destroying many hearts, including his own.

Orhan as Ka's friend wrote this memoir as a remembrance for his poet friend after Ka was shot in Frankfurt, 4 years and 36 days after leaving Kars forever.

Pamuk walked the journey that Ka traveled while in Kars, met the people central to Ka's poetry, and tried to find the assemble of 19 poems Ka had produced in his stay there. Only one was discovered through an old video of Ka's televised reading of it.

The rest of poems, as the souls who inspired it, were lost forever.

Rating : 9/10.