'A novel of profound relevance to the present moment.' The Times As the snow begins to fail, a journalist arrives İn the remote city of Kars on the Turkish border. Kars is a troubled place - there's a suicide epidemic among its young women, Islamists are poised to win the local elections, and the head of the intellisence service is o viciously effective. When the growing blizzard cuts off the outside world, the stage is set for a terrible and desperate act... ORHAN pamuk's magnîficent and bestselling new novel evokes the spiritual fragility of the non~Western world, its ambivalence about the godless West, and its fury. 'Profound and frequently brilliant.. . Illuminate[s] the confrontation betvveen secular and extremist Islamic worlds better than any \vork of non-fiction I can think of New Statesman A gripping political thriller .. .

Pamuk keeps so many balls in the air that you cannot separate the inquiry into the nature of religious belief from the examination of modern Turkey the investigation of East-West relations, and the nature of art itself Spectator