Snow (Orhan Pamuk)

The year is 1992. Ka, a poet and political exile, returns to Turkey as a journalist, assigned to write an investigative piece about troubling events in the small and mysterious city of Kars near the Armenian border.

The snow is falling fast as Ka arrives, and soon all roads are closed. He discovers a city plagued by a 'suicide epidemic' amongst young women, and where the Islamists are poised to win the municipal elections. If he wants to understand what's happened to this part of the world during his absence, this is the place to begin.

But the rogue coup that unfolds before his eyes over the next three days tells him far more than he wants to know. He sees a city wasting away under the shadow of Europe, consumed by religious and political conspiracies, and haunted by the silences of its own history.

Snow angered Islamists and westernised Turks alike when it came out in early 2002 - and promptly sold more than 100,000 copies. A spectacular tour de force, it evokes the spiritual fragility of the non-western world, its ambivalence about the godless West, and its fury.