"Snow" by Orhan Pamuk is some of the finest writing of the past decade. Pamuk, the Nobel Prize Winning author of "My Name is Red," "The Black Book," and "The Museum of Innocence" presents here a portrait of modern Turkey in all its complexities and contrad...ictions. The story concerns Ka, an middle aged exiled poet living in Germany who travels to Kars, a remote Turkish city with the dual purpose of reporting on a string of suicides of "head-scarf" girls and to reconnect with a woman from his past. The book's frame narrative is fascinating and typical Pamuk - the narrator (implied to be the author himself) plays with his readers, giving hints and clues to what will happen in fifty or sixty pages and putting a narrative together that keeps the ready wanting to move forward to its startling conclusion. While in Kars, Ka comes face to face with archetypal figures representing aspects of Turkish society. What makes the book work is that Pamuk does not indulge these metaphors heavily and instead lets them speak for themselves. From head-scarf girls to washed up actors to religious school boys to Kurdish militants to our erstwhile protagonist, we are presented with characters who exude sadness and melancholy but are not meant to be pitied or made into caricatures. The novel talks about many themes beyond the simple "East-West" dichotomy so present in books about Turkey and which make the book rich in ideas and narrative. My two criticism are that I found that this book took me a VERY long time to read and that often, I found myself annoyed with Pamuk's meandering style. It is not for a casual reader - one must be willing to completely inhabit the world of the book. In spite of its density, the novel is immensely satisfying and well deserves its place as one of the best books of the past twenty years.