Orhan Pamuk is the most famous Turkish writer and one of the leading authors of intellectual prose of Europe. A participant of several juicy political scandals and an exile, Orhan Pamuk, in the novel Snow brings up one of the most painful for his motherland question: the place of Turkey between the West and East.
The plot outline is quite simple. This political-detective-and-love story is slowly developing against the background of the heavy snowfall, which cuts Kars off the rest of the world.The snow is like a veil, wrapping up the town, which makes the main character, Ka, feel even more confused. It underlines the idea that the protagonist got into the world which lives according to the different rules and different logic than the West. What makes this simple story to be elevated to the levels of the refined literature is the writer’s style and purpose.It was the author’s basic idea to convey slowness and contradiction, the most typical features of the modern Turkey, overfilled with the urgent religious and social problems but not hurrying to resolve them.
So Pamuk is not afraid to linger on long explanations and obvious contradictions. His style most of all resembles the Arabic characters or neatly woven carpet – it is abundant with metaphors and details, cumbersome phrases – all these stylistic features dispose to unhurried reading-contemplation.Pamuk splendidly uses expressive linguistic devices to create highly palpable images the most beautiful of which is the image of snow used as a symbol of primordial purity of human soul. If after the reading of this novel we stop looking at the Turkey exclusively as at the country of cheap tourism but get filled with respect and tolerance toward it, probably the world will become a little bit better. So isn’t it the purpose of the true literature?
