Snow

So melodious is his voice, so seductive his accent, and so energetic his narration that I might be willing to listen to John Lee reading the Manhattan Directory. Happily, he has far, far richer material than that in this bottomless novel by the brilliant and bold Turkish Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk. In the story, a somewhat pompous and naïve expatriate Turkish poet returns to his native home, drawn by love and curiosity, and encounters all manner of characters who never conform to his expectations. The timbre of Lee's voice and his brogue might put you in mind of Sean Connery. Conveying an exotic, distinctly non-Western atmosphere, Lee displays the natural gifts of a storyteller who invests every sentence with verve and subtlety. M.O. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

Starred review from July 19, 2004
A Turkish poet who spent 12 years as a political exile in Germany witnesses firsthand the clash between radical Islam and Western ideals in this enigmatically beautiful novel. Ka's reasons for visiting the small Turkish town of Kars are twofold: curiosity about the rash of suicides by young girls in the town and a hope to reconnect with "the beautiful Ipek," whom he knew as a youth. But Kars is a tangle of poverty-stricken families, Kurdish separatists, political Islamists (including Ipek's spirited sister Kadife) and Ka finds himself making compromises with all in a desperate play for his own happiness. Ka encounters government officials, idealistic students, leftist theater groups and the charismatic and perhaps terroristic Blue while trying to convince Ipek to return to Germany with him; each conversation pits warring ideologies against each other and against Ka's own weary melancholy. Pamuk himself becomes an important character, as he describes his attempts to piece together "what really happened" in the few days his friend Ka spent in Kars, during which snow cuts off the town from the rest of the world and a bloody coup from an unexpected source hurtles toward a startling climax. Pamuk's sometimes exhaustive conversations and descriptions create a stark picture of a too-little-known part of the world, where politics, religion and even happiness can seem alternately all-consuming and irrelevant. A detached tone and some dogmatic abstractions make for tough reading, but Ka's rediscovery of God and poetry in a desolate place makes the novel's sadness profound and moving. Agent, Andrew Wylie.
(Aug.)

Forecast
: Pamuk's reputation—bigger outside the U.S. than in—enjoyed a boost with 2001's
My Name Is Red. This timely, thoughtful and demanding book may see it grow further
.