Snow in March

I finished Snow by Orhan Pamuk. The love story between Ka and Ipeck is fraught with self doubt and passion. It took me so long to read that I almost had a need to go back and re-read to understand all the relationships in the book. As beautiful as it was in places, better editing and perhaps a better job at translation could have perfected it. In translating, to perfect the beauty of the work, the essence of the word into English is better than word for word translating. Could it be that multiple meanings of the Turkish could have been better in a different translation? Some of the political story in the middle of the book was unnecessary, but the political realtionship between Blue and Turgut Bey's family was intregal to the story. Snow is what is keeping the city with its revolution cut off from the rest of the country, but it is the beauty of the snow that is also causing Ka to write his poetry again. The snow is actually hiding the poverty of the town. The small town of Kars, Turkey, is caught in its spiral of unemployment, poverty and general decay. Many of the buildings are in disrepair, empty and dark in the city being covered up with the snow. In the dark lonely city the reader is  shown the striking contrast between the old dark teahouses with few visitors and the homes with satellite dishes streaming television images to groups of family members as examples of life for the residents of Kars. Ka, once a political exile living in Germany, has returned to cover the story of the suicide girls. He is a poet who once had revolutionary ideas, is more interested in pursing his own idea of happiness now. His religion is unlike the radical Islam that the young Turks in Kars are interested in. This book could be compared to Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, the story of the poet looking for love in the Russian Revolution. "Where Pamuk really excels in this novel is in the deftness with which he allows these forces to tug at one another. Like Dostoevsky, the literary forebear whose spirit haunts this book most palpably, Pamuk appears to value politics, among other things, as a great opportunity to let his characters rant in all sorts of productive ways." - Christian Caryl, The New York Review of Books New York Review of Books"