After years of lonely political exile, Turkish poet Ka returns to Istanbul to attend his mother's funeral and learns about a series of suicides among pious girls forbidden to wear headscarves.
A burned-out Turkish writer has spent many years in Germany as a political exile, resigned to a life of dreary bleakness. Then his mother dies, and he returns home to Istanbul, where a series of inexplicable events in a nearby town provoke his curiosity. Why are young Islamic girls committing suicide? And what is the real story behind the military coup and its crackdown on extremists? As he gets drawn further into the situation, he finds himself writing with his old fervor, and he falls in love with a woman he knew long ago. Now all he wants to do is change his life, but to do so he must somehow throw off the effects of anguish and alienation.... Named by the New York Times as one of the 10 best books of 2004.
- Genre: Fiction + Literature Themes, Fiction + Literature Genres
- Subgenre: Literary, Family + Friendship, Conflicts + Dualities, Love + Relationships + Sex, Psychology, Human Qualities + Behavior, Nature + Animals, Types of Characters
- Publisher: Vintage Books
- Pages: 426
- Edition: Reprint
- Language: English
- Format: paperback
- Release Date: July 19, 2005
- Date Published: July 19, 2005
- Author: Orhan Pamuk, Maureen Freely