Snow by Orhan Pamuk

This is the second book I have read by Orhan Pamuk who is a Turkish writer. I enjoyed this book, which is about a poet named Ka who is a Turk who returns from Germany to track down a woman he loved in Istanbul, Ipek, as a young man.  He visits a remote town in Eastern Turkey to write about the head scarf girls who commit suicide and gets caught up in the drama of the tension between fundamentalist muslims and the Ataturk secularists. It is a love story with a great twist at the end. Ka struggles caught between the European world and the old fashioned Turkish world. He is able to write poems again and finds love while he is in Kars. He also gets caught up in the politics and struggles with which side to support - the Ataturks who represent modern Turkey or the Islamic fundamentalists. You feel the snow and isolation through out the book. While there were times when one gets bogged down with the complicated story and who is on what side, it was a great read about the challenges Turkey and the West and Middle East face today: religion v secularism, traditional women v modern women, East v west, politics, love v duty.

" ...it snows only once in our dreams. As he watched the snow fall outside his window, as slowly and silently as the snow fell in a dream, the traveler fell into a long-desired, long awaited reverie; cleansed by memories of innocence and childhood, he succumbed to optimism and dared to believe himself at home in this world." page 4