Snow (novel)
Encyclopedia
Snow is a novel by Turkish author Orhan Pamuk
. It was published in Turkish
in 2002 and in English (translated by Maureen Freely
) in 2004. The story encapsulates many of the political and cultural tensions of modern Turkey and successfully combines humor, social commentary, mysticism, and a deep sympathy with its characters.
Kar is the word for Snow, but the main character also abbreviates his name to Ka (his initials) with the novel set in the eastern Turkish city of Kars
. An opening (and recurring) theme concerns reasons behind a suicide epidemic among teenage girls (which actually took place in the city of Batman
).
Ka is a poet, who returns to Turkey
after 12 years of political exile in Germany. He has several motives, first, as a journalist, to investigate a spate of suicides but also in the hope of meeting a woman he used to know. Heavy snow cuts off the town for about three days during which time Ka is in conversation with a former communist, a secularist, a fascist nationalist, a possible Islamic extremist, Islamic moderates, young Kurds, the military, the Secret Service, the police and in particular, an actor-revolutionary. In the midst of this, love and passion are to be found. Temporarily closed off from the world, a farcical coup is staged and linked melodramatically to a stage play.
The main discussion concerns the interface of secularism and belief but there are references to all of Turkey's twentieth century history.
Though he has suffered from writer's block for a number of years, Ka suddenly feels inspired and composes a poem called "Snow", which describes a mystic
experience. Other poems follow. At İpek's suggestion, Ka goes to see Sheikh Saadettin and confesses that he associates religion with a backwardness that he does not want himself or Turkey to fall into. But he feels a sense of comfort with the sheikh and begins to accept his new poems as gifts from God.
Other significant characters Ka encounters include a wanted Muslim radical named Blue and İpek's younger sister Kadife, who has joined and become the leader of the "head-scarf girls", those who insist upon being "covered." Through Kadife, he meets another head-scarf girl, Hande, who suggested suicide to Teslime but insists she did not intend for the girl to follow through. Throughout the book, the act of insisting upon wearing a head-scarf, which places these girls in a head-on collision with the state authorities and entails enormous pressures and sacrifices, is described as an act of empowerment and assertion of their identity as women; in one passage, Ka refers to them as "Islamic Feminists".
Ka is impressed by Necip, a student at the religious high school, who, like many of the young Muslims at the school, is quite taken by Kadife. The narrator lets the reader know that Necip will die soon. Growing tensions between secularists and Islamists explode during a televised event at the National Theater, during which one secular group puts on a classic play condemning head scarves
. During the play, a number of soldiers take positions on stage. The leader of the theatre group receives a messenger and announces the death of director of the Institute of Education. Immediately after this the soldiers on stage start firing at the audience. Necip is among those killed. The police and military establish martial law, and Ka is taken in for questioning because he has been seen with Islamists. He is shattered to find Necip's body in the morgue and identifies him as the one who led him to Blue.
Ka is taken to meet Sunay Zaim, an actor whose group put on the play at the National Theater and who is now orchestrating the round-ups and investigations of suspicious persons. Sunay is a staunch Turkish Republican, who had often played with great conviction revolutionaries and dictators such as Robespierre, Napoleon and Lenin, but whose dream is to play Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, was frustrated. As the snow has made the roads and railroads impassable, no outside authorities are able to intervene in the coup. The isolation of Kars and Sunay's old friendship with the senior military officer left in charge of the local garrison enabled him to become a revolutionary dictator in real life as well as on the stage, for a for at least a few days — his act being simultaneously a coup d'état
and a coup de théâtre.
Ka is then taken by Kadife to speak with Blue, who is Kadife's lover. Ka convinces Blue that he has a contact at a newspaper in Germany who will be willing to print a statement denouncing the coup if Blue can get support from non-Islamists. To further this fiction, Ka returns to his hotel to convince Kadife and İpek's leftist father Turgut Bey to collaborate on the statement. After the father and Kadife leave, Ka's longing for İpek is fulfilled when the two make love.
At this point, the narrator, who identifies himself as a novelist named Orhan, flashes forward four years and relates that Ka spent the last years of his life obsessing over İpek and writing unsent letters to her before being murdered in Frankfurt. The narrator will play a much larger role in the story in the later chapters of the novel. We are clearly meant to identify the narrator with Orhan Pamuk himself as he later identifies The Black Book
as one of his works, as well as The Museum of Innocence
which he would later publish in 2008.
Turgut Bey attends a meeting at which representatives from the various factions opposed to the coup, including Islamists, leftists, and Kurds, attempt comically to produce a coherent statement to the European press denouncing the action. After Blue is arrested and held by the nationalists, Ka negotiates a deal with Sunay Zaim that will result in Blue's release but only if Kadife agrees to play a role in Zaim's production of Thomas Kyd
's The Spanish Tragedy
and remove her head-scarf on live television during the course of the play. Both Kadife and Blue agree.
Ka is soon picked up and beaten by two secret policemen working for Z Demerkol, a nationalist, who is looking for Blue and also wants to counter what he sees as Ka's influence. He tells Ka that İpek was Blue's mistress during her marriage to Muhtar and still keeps in contact with him. İpek later confesses the affair and further indicates that Kadife only got involved with Blue out of envy. Ka's jealousy is intense and the two fall asleep after weeping together. She still believes that they can go to Frankfurt and be happy, and he eventually comes around to believing it again too. However, before they can leave he must convince Kadife to not take her head-scarf off during the play as both İpek and Turgut Bey have become very concerned at the possible reaction of the students from the religious school. Despite Ka's urging, Kadife insists upon uncovering herself during the performance.
After a scene in which Ka is seen confused and tormented by feelings of pain and jealousy, the narrative describing events from his point of view abruptly breaks off. The narrator explains that Ka had left behind a detailed account of his acts and feelings while in Kars, but that there was no reference to his last hours in the city, and it is left to his friend Orhan to try to reconstruct these by following in Ka's footsteps, visiting the places where he had been and meeting the people he had met.
Ka's actions immediately after leaving the theater remain a mystery which is never completely untangled. Orhan is, however, able to establish that Ka was later taken by the military to the train station, where he was put on the first train scheduled to leave now that the routes from the town are open again. Ka complied but sent soldiers to retrieve İpek for him. However, just as İpek is saying her farewells to her father, news arrives that Blue and Hande have been shot. İpek is shattered and blames Ka for leading the police to Blue's hideout. Instead of going to Ka, she and her father go to the theater to see Kadife.
The novel's narrator then describes events at the theater as if he has reconstructed them from various sources. Kadife and Zaim have an on-stage discussion about suicide and the different reasons why men and women kill themselves. A garret and noose are set up, and Zaim hands Kadife a gun after he demonstrates that it is not loaded. When Kadife shoots Zaim much of the audience assumes his death is staged, and even Kadife appears to be surprised that the gun is in fact loaded. Zaim had clearly prepared and orchestrated his own death on stage, "pushing art to its farthest limits" and preferring to die at the peak of his theatrical and political career. Soon afterwords, as the snow has subsided, Ka's train departs and local authorities enter the town to stifle the coup and restore order.
Years later, the narrator goes to Kars to uncover details on Ka's story. He meets with many of the principals, including Kadife, who served very little time for what was ruled an accidental homicide and is now married to a student from the religious school. Meeting İpek, the narrator himself falls deeply in love with her and becomes intensely jealous of his dead friend (and of the dead Blue). In his talk with İpek he tells her that Ka was a shattered man who never forgot about İpek but was prevented from returning to Kars owing to a warrant for his arrest. İpek is still convinced that Ka betrayed Blue. Indeed, the narrator soon finds evidence that suggests that Ka went back to talk to the police after his visit to the theater and probably told them where to find Blue. İpek has remained unmarried, does not expect to ever find love again, and devotes herself to her nephew.
In the end it is disclosed that a new group of Islamic militants was formed by younger followers of Blue who had been forced into exile in Germany and based themselves in Berlin, vowing to take revenge for the death of their admired leader. It is assumed that one of them had assassinated Ka and taken away the only extant copy of the poems he had written in Kars. Thus, while much is told about the names of these poems, their themes and the circumstances under which each was written, the poems themselves are lost.
Orhan Pamuk
Ferit Orhan Pamuk , generally known simply as Orhan Pamuk, is a Turkish novelist. He is also the Robert Yik-Fong Tam Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, where he teaches comparative literature and writing....
. It was published in Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
in 2002 and in English (translated by Maureen Freely
Maureen Freely
Maureen Freely is a U.S. journalist, novelist, translator and professor.-Biography:Born in Neptune, New Jersey, Freely grew up in Turkey and now lives in England, where she lectures at the University of Warwick and is an occasional contributor to The Guardian and The Independent newspapers. Among...
) in 2004. The story encapsulates many of the political and cultural tensions of modern Turkey and successfully combines humor, social commentary, mysticism, and a deep sympathy with its characters.
Kar is the word for Snow, but the main character also abbreviates his name to Ka (his initials) with the novel set in the eastern Turkish city of Kars
Kars
Kars is a city in northeast Turkey and the capital of Kars Province. The population of the city is 73,826 as of 2010.-Etymology:As Chorzene, the town appears in Roman historiography as part of ancient Armenia...
. An opening (and recurring) theme concerns reasons behind a suicide epidemic among teenage girls (which actually took place in the city of Batman
Batman, Turkey
Batman is a city in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey and the capital of Batman Province. It lies on a plateau, 540 meters above sea level, near the confluence of the Batman River and the Tigris. The Batı Raman oil field, which is the largest oil field in Turkey, is located just outside...
).
Plot summary
Though most of the early part of the story is told in the third person from Ka's point of view, an omniscient narrator sometimes makes his presence known, posing as a friend of Ka's who is telling the story based on Ka's journals and correspondence. This narrator sometimes provides the reader with information before Ka knows it or foreshadows later events in the story. At times, the action seems somewhat dream-like.Ka is a poet, who returns to Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
after 12 years of political exile in Germany. He has several motives, first, as a journalist, to investigate a spate of suicides but also in the hope of meeting a woman he used to know. Heavy snow cuts off the town for about three days during which time Ka is in conversation with a former communist, a secularist, a fascist nationalist, a possible Islamic extremist, Islamic moderates, young Kurds, the military, the Secret Service, the police and in particular, an actor-revolutionary. In the midst of this, love and passion are to be found. Temporarily closed off from the world, a farcical coup is staged and linked melodramatically to a stage play.
The main discussion concerns the interface of secularism and belief but there are references to all of Turkey's twentieth century history.
Plot
Ka reunites with a woman named İpek, whom he once had feelings for, whose father runs the hotel he is staying in. İpek is divorced from Muhtar, partly due to Muhtar's newfound interest in political Islam. In a café, the pair witness a shooting of the local director of the Institute of Education by a Muslim extremist from out of town who blames the director for the death of a young woman named Teslime, claiming she killed herself because of the director's ban on head-scarves in school. After the incident, Ka visits Muhtar, who tells him about his experience of finding Islam, which relates to a blizzard and meeting a charismatic sheikh named Saadettin Efendi. The police pick up Ka and Muhtar due to the killing of the educationalist. Ka is questioned and Muhtar is beaten.Though he has suffered from writer's block for a number of years, Ka suddenly feels inspired and composes a poem called "Snow", which describes a mystic
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
experience. Other poems follow. At İpek's suggestion, Ka goes to see Sheikh Saadettin and confesses that he associates religion with a backwardness that he does not want himself or Turkey to fall into. But he feels a sense of comfort with the sheikh and begins to accept his new poems as gifts from God.
Other significant characters Ka encounters include a wanted Muslim radical named Blue and İpek's younger sister Kadife, who has joined and become the leader of the "head-scarf girls", those who insist upon being "covered." Through Kadife, he meets another head-scarf girl, Hande, who suggested suicide to Teslime but insists she did not intend for the girl to follow through. Throughout the book, the act of insisting upon wearing a head-scarf, which places these girls in a head-on collision with the state authorities and entails enormous pressures and sacrifices, is described as an act of empowerment and assertion of their identity as women; in one passage, Ka refers to them as "Islamic Feminists".
Ka is impressed by Necip, a student at the religious high school, who, like many of the young Muslims at the school, is quite taken by Kadife. The narrator lets the reader know that Necip will die soon. Growing tensions between secularists and Islamists explode during a televised event at the National Theater, during which one secular group puts on a classic play condemning head scarves
Headscarf controversy in Turkey
Turkey has been a secular state since it was founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1923. He introduced the secularization of the state in the Turkish Constitution of 1924, alongside Atatürk's Reforms. These were in accordance with the Kemalist Ideology, with a strict appliance of laicite in the...
. During the play, a number of soldiers take positions on stage. The leader of the theatre group receives a messenger and announces the death of director of the Institute of Education. Immediately after this the soldiers on stage start firing at the audience. Necip is among those killed. The police and military establish martial law, and Ka is taken in for questioning because he has been seen with Islamists. He is shattered to find Necip's body in the morgue and identifies him as the one who led him to Blue.
Ka is taken to meet Sunay Zaim, an actor whose group put on the play at the National Theater and who is now orchestrating the round-ups and investigations of suspicious persons. Sunay is a staunch Turkish Republican, who had often played with great conviction revolutionaries and dictators such as Robespierre, Napoleon and Lenin, but whose dream is to play Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, was frustrated. As the snow has made the roads and railroads impassable, no outside authorities are able to intervene in the coup. The isolation of Kars and Sunay's old friendship with the senior military officer left in charge of the local garrison enabled him to become a revolutionary dictator in real life as well as on the stage, for a for at least a few days — his act being simultaneously a coup d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
and a coup de théâtre.
Ka is then taken by Kadife to speak with Blue, who is Kadife's lover. Ka convinces Blue that he has a contact at a newspaper in Germany who will be willing to print a statement denouncing the coup if Blue can get support from non-Islamists. To further this fiction, Ka returns to his hotel to convince Kadife and İpek's leftist father Turgut Bey to collaborate on the statement. After the father and Kadife leave, Ka's longing for İpek is fulfilled when the two make love.
At this point, the narrator, who identifies himself as a novelist named Orhan, flashes forward four years and relates that Ka spent the last years of his life obsessing over İpek and writing unsent letters to her before being murdered in Frankfurt. The narrator will play a much larger role in the story in the later chapters of the novel. We are clearly meant to identify the narrator with Orhan Pamuk himself as he later identifies The Black Book
The Black Book (Orhan Pamuk novel)
The Black Book is a novel by Turkish author Orhan Pamuk. It was published in Turkish in 1990 and first translated and published in English in 1994...
as one of his works, as well as The Museum of Innocence
The Museum of Innocence
The Museum of Innocence is a novel by Orhan Pamuk, Nobel-laureate Turkish novelist published on August 29, 2008. The book is a long and detailed account of the obsessive love that Kemal, a wealthy businessman, bears for Füsun, a lower class shop girl 12 years Kemal's junior, for over 30 years...
which he would later publish in 2008.
Turgut Bey attends a meeting at which representatives from the various factions opposed to the coup, including Islamists, leftists, and Kurds, attempt comically to produce a coherent statement to the European press denouncing the action. After Blue is arrested and held by the nationalists, Ka negotiates a deal with Sunay Zaim that will result in Blue's release but only if Kadife agrees to play a role in Zaim's production of Thomas Kyd
Thomas Kyd
Thomas Kyd was an English dramatist, the author of The Spanish Tragedy, and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama....
's The Spanish Tragedy
The Spanish Tragedy
The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo is Mad Again is an Elizabethan tragedy written by Thomas Kyd between 1582 and 1592. Highly popular and influential in its time, The Spanish Tragedy established a new genre in English theatre, the revenge play or revenge tragedy. Its plot contains several violent...
and remove her head-scarf on live television during the course of the play. Both Kadife and Blue agree.
Ka is soon picked up and beaten by two secret policemen working for Z Demerkol, a nationalist, who is looking for Blue and also wants to counter what he sees as Ka's influence. He tells Ka that İpek was Blue's mistress during her marriage to Muhtar and still keeps in contact with him. İpek later confesses the affair and further indicates that Kadife only got involved with Blue out of envy. Ka's jealousy is intense and the two fall asleep after weeping together. She still believes that they can go to Frankfurt and be happy, and he eventually comes around to believing it again too. However, before they can leave he must convince Kadife to not take her head-scarf off during the play as both İpek and Turgut Bey have become very concerned at the possible reaction of the students from the religious school. Despite Ka's urging, Kadife insists upon uncovering herself during the performance.
After a scene in which Ka is seen confused and tormented by feelings of pain and jealousy, the narrative describing events from his point of view abruptly breaks off. The narrator explains that Ka had left behind a detailed account of his acts and feelings while in Kars, but that there was no reference to his last hours in the city, and it is left to his friend Orhan to try to reconstruct these by following in Ka's footsteps, visiting the places where he had been and meeting the people he had met.
Ka's actions immediately after leaving the theater remain a mystery which is never completely untangled. Orhan is, however, able to establish that Ka was later taken by the military to the train station, where he was put on the first train scheduled to leave now that the routes from the town are open again. Ka complied but sent soldiers to retrieve İpek for him. However, just as İpek is saying her farewells to her father, news arrives that Blue and Hande have been shot. İpek is shattered and blames Ka for leading the police to Blue's hideout. Instead of going to Ka, she and her father go to the theater to see Kadife.
The novel's narrator then describes events at the theater as if he has reconstructed them from various sources. Kadife and Zaim have an on-stage discussion about suicide and the different reasons why men and women kill themselves. A garret and noose are set up, and Zaim hands Kadife a gun after he demonstrates that it is not loaded. When Kadife shoots Zaim much of the audience assumes his death is staged, and even Kadife appears to be surprised that the gun is in fact loaded. Zaim had clearly prepared and orchestrated his own death on stage, "pushing art to its farthest limits" and preferring to die at the peak of his theatrical and political career. Soon afterwords, as the snow has subsided, Ka's train departs and local authorities enter the town to stifle the coup and restore order.
Years later, the narrator goes to Kars to uncover details on Ka's story. He meets with many of the principals, including Kadife, who served very little time for what was ruled an accidental homicide and is now married to a student from the religious school. Meeting İpek, the narrator himself falls deeply in love with her and becomes intensely jealous of his dead friend (and of the dead Blue). In his talk with İpek he tells her that Ka was a shattered man who never forgot about İpek but was prevented from returning to Kars owing to a warrant for his arrest. İpek is still convinced that Ka betrayed Blue. Indeed, the narrator soon finds evidence that suggests that Ka went back to talk to the police after his visit to the theater and probably told them where to find Blue. İpek has remained unmarried, does not expect to ever find love again, and devotes herself to her nephew.
In the end it is disclosed that a new group of Islamic militants was formed by younger followers of Blue who had been forced into exile in Germany and based themselves in Berlin, vowing to take revenge for the death of their admired leader. It is assumed that one of them had assassinated Ka and taken away the only extant copy of the poems he had written in Kars. Thus, while much is told about the names of these poems, their themes and the circumstances under which each was written, the poems themselves are lost.
See also
- Headscarf controversy in TurkeyHeadscarf controversy in TurkeyTurkey has been a secular state since it was founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1923. He introduced the secularization of the state in the Turkish Constitution of 1924, alongside Atatürk's Reforms. These were in accordance with the Kemalist Ideology, with a strict appliance of laicite in the...
- Secularism in TurkeySecularism in TurkeySecularism in Turkey defines the relationship between religion and state in the country of Turkey. Secularism was first introduced with the 1928 amendment of the Constitution of 1924, which removed the provision declaring that the "Religion of the State is Islam", and with the later reforms of...
- Islam in TurkeyIslam in TurkeyThe region secacomprising modern Turkey has a long and rich Islamic tradition stretching back to the dawn of the Seljuk period and Ottoman Empire. The country has many historical mosques present throughout the cities and towns, including many in Istanbul...
- Ka-MerKa-MerKa-Mer is a Turkish women's group that finds shelter for and offers legal aid to women who have been threatened by their relatives....
, a TurkishTurkeyTurkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
women's group