Exiled Turkish poet Ka travels to the remote city of Kars, drawn by his memories of a beautiful woman, now divorced. The city has recently experienced an epidemic of suicides by religious young women who were forbidden to wear head scarves. Ka arrives in Kars just as a snowstorm closes all transportation to and from the city, and wanders the city, hoping to understand it and its residents. Along the way, he finds poems coming to him, inspired by the people and places he sees.

The bulk of this novel takes place over two days in snowbound Kars, which provides the author with a framework to hang a lengthy meditation about the relationship between and the roles of the religious and the secular in modern Turkey. The people of Kars struggle to reconcile their religious beliefs with the demands of a secular government. Some find this easy, while others reject the idea that the secular has any merit. How useful this meditation might be in understanding the cultural undercurrents of Turkey is unclear, but it does show how these issues color the politics of Turkey.