A political novel set in the 1990s in Kars, a remote city in northeastern Turkey. Ka, a poet who has lived years in exile in Germany, travels there as a journalist to report on local elections and a series of suicides among young women who are forbidden to wear headscarves at school. He also hopes to meet a woman he once knew.
A heavy snowfall cuts off the town, and tensions among secularists, Islamists, nationalists and the army come to a head. The book explores faith, belief, belonging and love, and is often seen as one of Pamuk's most political novels.