Snow

I took ages to read this book, but persisted, and it was worth it. I found it on my shelf - I hadn't bought it myself so wondered where it had come from. Intrigued, I decided to give it a go. It turned out that it belonged to one of my sons, and he'd left it with me without telling me. A friend who'd read it also recommended it, so I felt I had to.
First of all, it gave me a window on Turkish politics, something I knew absolutely nothing about. I was vaguely aware of controversy over headscarves for women, but that was all. Headscarves are central to Snow but it's about much more. Orhan Pamuk, the author, who I'm ashamed to say I'd never heard of, is one of Turkey's most celebrated writers, and of course, I now see his name everywhere.
I won't attempt to describe the events in the book, it's too dense and complex for a brief precis, but to cut a very long story short, it follows the progress of an emigre writer and sometime poet, Ka, who is commissioned to write an article on the seemingly large numbers of girls in the snow-bound town, Kars, where he grew up, who are committing suicide because, apparently, they have been forbidden by Turkish law to wear headscarves. A lot happens, which I won't pretend to describe, but the events in the book take place while the town is blanketed by thick snow, and this metaphor provides the central organising principle behind the book.
There are several themes running through the book - that of the impact of exile; Ka is viewed with suspicion, as tainted and polluted by Western values, yet there is enormous interest in him and he acquires something of an exalted status almost immediately.
Ka battle throughout with his atheism and the resurgent Islamism he finds all around him. Turkey is a country riven by conflict, but this makes it a vibrant, questioning country, in ferment. It's torn asunder by those who want it to becoome a fundamentalist state, and those who want it to be accepted into the EU, and become fully westernised. There's a much better review here which will relate the events in the book more effectively than I can, as it really is extremely complex, and I don't want to do the book a disservice.
I must say, though, that the translation isn't great. it's by the journalist Maureen Freely, who is British, but grew up in Istanbul. I suppose it's descriptive rather than literary, but I felt all the way though that I was missing a great deal - it seemed incomplete somehow. The prose didn't sing. Translation's tricky, but when it works, it's wonderful and there are some great examples. This isn't one of them, but the book still made me want to find out more. I now read news articles about Turkey in the paper with great interest, and it was Snow that gave me this. Not many books do that. A great achievement.