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“Not only an
engrossing feat of tale-spinning, but essential reading for our times…Snow is eerily prescient, both in its
analyses of fundamentalist attitudes and in the nature of the repression and
rage and conspiracies and violence it depicts…[Pamuk] deserves to be better
known in North America, and no doubt he will be.”
— Margaret Atwood, New York Times Book Review
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“With a wicked grin,
the political novel makes a triumphant return…As if Nabokov and Rushdie had
taken their circus act on the road, or Carlos Fuentes were Anatolian instead of
Aztec, or Milan Kundera remembered how to laugh.”
— Harper’s Magazine
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“A work of art…Alternating
between the snowstorm’s hush and philosophical conversations reminiscent of
Dostoyevsky’s great novels, Snow
proves a…timely and gripping read.”
— Minneapolis Star-Tribune
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“Marvelous…As quiet
and transformative as a blizzard and as coldly beautiful.”
— St. Petersburg Times
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“An urgent question
seethes at the heart of Orhan Pamuk’s latest novel: ‘Can the West endure any
democracy achieved by enemies who in no way resemble them?’ Judging by the
Turkish author’s devastating parable of political extremism, the answer is no…As
in The White Castle and My Name is Red, Pamuk elegantly dissects
the recurrent quandary in Turkish history—look westwards, or inwards and
backwards…Never one to flinch from the weighty issues of Turkey’s past and
present history, Pamuk is here at his most political yet.”
— Financial Times
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“A melancholy farce
full of rabbit-out-of-a-hat plot twists that, despite its locale, looks
uncannily like the magic lantern show of misfire, denial, and pratfall that
appears daily in our newspapers…Pamuk gives convincing proof that the solitary
artist is a better bellwether than any televised think-tanker.”
— Independent on Sunday (London)
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“A novel of profound
relevance to the present moment. [The] debate between the forces of secularism
and those of religious fanaticism…is conducted with subtle, painful insight
into the human weakness that can underlie both impulses.”
— Times (London)
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“Powerful…Astonishingly
timely…A deft melding of political intrigue and philosophy, romance and noir…[Snow] is forever confounding our
expectations.”
— Vogue
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“In Snow, Pamuk uses his powers to show us
the critical dilemmas of modern Turkey. How European a country is it? How can
it respond to fundamentalist Islam? And how can an artist deal with these
issues?…The author’s high artistry and fierce politics take our minds further into
the age’s crisis than any commentator could. Orhan Pamuk is the sort of writer
for whom the Nobel Prize was invented.”
— Daily Telegraph (London)
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“Profound and
frequently brilliant…Pamuk shows decisively that the European novel remains a
form, and a freedom, for which we have reason to be thankful…Snow illuminate[s] the confrontation
between secular and extremist Islamic worlds better than any work of nonfiction
I can think of.”
— New Statesman (London)
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“Part political
thriller, part farce, Snow is [Pamuk’s]
most dazzling fiction yet. One of the top books of the year.”
— Village Voice
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“Pure magic…Snow is excellent.”
— San Francisco Chronicle
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“Brilliant…Pamuk
writes with such grace and deep respect for his conflicted characters that this
rich novel passes like a dream, encompassing every aspect of love and belief.”
— People
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“What a pleasure it
is when we come across some really fine fiction now and again. From its opening
words, Orhan Pamuk’s new novel Snow
stands out from the contemporary slush…Without ever drifting into the doldrums
of meditation, Pamuk has managed to write a novel of ideas in the form of a
highly dramatic story. This he achieves by a skillful, and very natural
blending of the techniques of poetry and prose…When it first came out in Turkey
in 2002, Snow angered Westernized
Turks and Islamists alike. This ambivalence complements the novel’s
construction which grows, most satisfyingly, out of one single image—an
elegance which gives to the whole a profound sense of unity, and fragility. Snow is a genuine tour-de-force.”
— Sunday Herald (London)
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“Snow has already been a bestseller in Turkey—given Pamuk’s stature
as a novelist and the novel’s content it could hardly fail to be. But what
makes it a brilliant novel is its artistry. 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…All this rolled into a gripping
political thriller.”
— Spectator (London)
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“‘How much can we
ever know about love and pain in another’s heart? How much can we hope to
understand those who have suffered deeper anguish, greater deprivation, and
more crushing disappointments than we ourselves have known?’ Such questions
haunt the poet Ka…[in] this novel, as much about love as it is about politics.”
— Observer (London)
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“Richly detailed…A thrilling
plot ingeniously shaped…Vividly embodies and painstakingly explores the
collision of Western values with Islamic fundamentalism…An astonishingly
complex, disturbing view of a world we owe it to ourselves to better
understand.”
— Kirkus Reviews