From the acclaimed author of "My Name Is Red" comes a spellbinding tale of disparate yearnings--for love, art, power and God--set in a remote Turkish town, where stirrings of political Islamism threaten to unravel the secular order.

From the acclaimed author of "My Name Is Red" comes a spellbinding tale of disparate yearnings--for love, art, power and God--set in a remote Turkish town, where stirrings of political Islamism threaten to unravel the secular order.

** NATIONAL BESTSELLER - Touching, slyly comic, and humming with cerebral suspense--a masterful novel of "political intrigue and philosophy, romance and noir" (Vogue) and ** the lethal chemistry between secular doubt and Islamic fanaticism from the Nobel Prize winner.** **

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.