A spellbinding tale of disparate yearnings ?for love, art, power and God. Following years of lonely political exile in Germany, Ka, a middle-aged poet, returns to Istanbul to attend his mother's funeral. Strange news of a wave of suicides lead him to Kars, a remote Turkish town where political Islamism threaten to unravel the secular order. Pamuk creates a stark picture of a too-little known part of the world, illuminating the contradictions gripping the individual and collective heart in many parts of the Muslim world.