Snow - Orhan Pamuk

Well, soon after putting down Kafka's The Castle, I picked up Snow by Orhan Pamuk. The first thing that struck me was that there are a lot of similarities between the two books. In each of them it is snowing constantly, the main character (K. in The Castle, Ka in Snow) is more or less new in town and the focus of both novels is political. Snow is an interesting book, a political novel looking at the tensions between secularists and fundamentalist Islamic groups in Turkey. It also considers women's rights, the relationship between poetry and politics and is a love story too. It is a little dense in parts and the plot is often convoluted but it is an important book to read for its insights into important issues. There is some humour too, I particularly like the fact that the main character, Ka, a poet, has to keep rushing into tea shops whenever he feels a poem coming on to write them before they disappear.

Orhan Pamuk has written several other novels, including one of my favourite ever novels My Name is Red.