kar. snow

i am currently reading "snow", which was listed as one of the ten best books of 2004 by the new york times, written by the turkish author orhan pamuk. pamuk is the winner of the nobel prize in literature in 2006. in his writings, influenced by thomas mann, fyodor dostojewski and leo tolstoy, he usually touches upon modern western and radical islamic conflicts in turkey.

the content of the book: it is about the poet ka, who lived in german exile in frankfurt for many years and now comes to his hometown kars, a turkish provincial town, where strange suicides occur (religious girls killed themselves because they refused to take off their head scarves). the town is in the hands of islamists and they also want to win the upcoming elections. there are strong politico-religious tensions and suddenly, there's a military putsch - it's a fight between islamists and liberals and ka gets involved in this clash of different ideals. in between that, he re-meets his former beloved ipek and tries to convince her to go back to germany with him. but no one can leave the town because it's continuously snowing.

i read it in english because the german translation is supposed to be not very good.

pamuk is one of the few, who judges the mass killings of kurds and armenians in ww1 and who defends freedom of speech in turkey. therefore, he is publicly criticised and is offended with murder threats in turkey. in 2005, for instance, he was taken to law due to "insulting turkishness" but the case was dropped. why turkey dropped its charges against him, read here. his situation is similar to the one of hrant dink who has been recently murdered (19 january 2007) in istanbul. yesterday, pamuk cancelled a trip to germany in fear of his own life (yasin hayal, who organized the murder of dink, carried out a threat) which was not the first time as it happened before in 2005. more information in german. this is sad in view of the fact that he should have been rewarded honorary doctorate of the free university of berlin which shows how popular he is in europe (he already received the €25,000 peace prize of the german book trade for his literary work which is the most prestigious book prize in germany).