Third Thursday is changing
course this month.
The book chosen at the last
meeting has not worked out, and we have decided to interrupt our run of
non-fiction titles
with a major fiction work,
a contender for the Nobel Prize (which its author has already won for a
former work).
Title: SNOW
Author: Orhan Pamuk
An exiled poet named Ka returns
to Turkey and travels to the forlorn city of Kars. His ostensible
purpose is to report on a wave of suicides among religious girls forbidden
to wear their head scarves. But Ka is also drawn by his memories
of the radiant Ipek, now recently divorced.
Amid blanketing snowfall and
universal suspicion, Ka finds himself pursued by figures ranging from Ipek's
ex-husband to a charismatic terrorist. A lost gift returns with ecstatic
suddenness. A theatrical evening climaxes in a massacre. And
finding God may be the prelude to losing everything else. Touching,
slyly comic, and humming with cerebral suspense, SNOW is of immense relevance
to our present moment.
Reviews: New Yorker:
A major work...conscience-ridden and carefully wrought, tonic in its scope,
candor, and humor...with suspense at every dimpled vortex...Pamuk is Turkey's
most likely candidate for the Nobel Prize.
New York Times: "A great and
almost irresistibly beguiling novelist... SNOW is enriched by mesmerizing
mixes: cruelty and farce, poetry and violence, and a voice whose timbres
range from a storyteller's playfulness to the dark torment of an explorer,
lost"
When: Thursday, September
18, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Berkeley and
Mike's
Cost: $3.00 (Wine,
cheese, coffee and dessert will be served)
RSVP: to Berkeley
