A stranger arrives in Kars, a Turkish provincial town, to investigate a strange series of suicides: young girls have taken their own lives because they were forced to remove their headscarves. Suddenly, a coup unfolds, orchestrated by an actor. A theatrical coup? Yet real blood is shed, real soldiers intervene, and no one can leave the town as it snows incessantly. This contemporary novel centers on the question of Turkey's identity between "Westernization" and Islamism.