My Name Is Red

From Strand Bookstore

Panic erupts when one of the chosen miniaturists, among a cadre of acclaimed artists commissioned by the sultan to create a great book celebrating the glories of his realm in the illuminating European style, disappears. 448p.

From the Publisher

At once a fiendishly devious mystery, a beguiling love story, and a brilliant symposium on the power of art, My Name Is Red is a transporting tale set amid the splendor and religious intrigue of sixteenth-century Istanbul, from one of the most prominent contemporary Turkish writers.

The Sultan has commissioned a cadre of the most acclaimed artists in the land to create a great book celebrating the glories of his realm. Their task: to illuminate the work in the European style. But because figurative art can be deemed an affront to Islam, this commission is a dangerous proposition indeed. The ruling elite therefore mustn’t know the full scope or nature of the project, and panic erupts when one of the chosen miniaturists disappears. The only clue to the mystery–or crime? –lies in the half-finished illuminations themselves. Part fantasy and part philosophical puzzle, My Name is Red is a kaleidoscopic journey to the intersection of art, religion, love, sex and power.

Translated from the Turkish by Erda M Göknar

Review

New Statesman
"More than any other book I can think of, it captures not just Istanbul's past and present contradictions, but also its terrible, timeless beauty. It's almost perfect, in other words."

Review

John Updike - New Yorker
"Although Pamuk demonstrates the patience and constructive ability of the nineteenth-century fabricators and their heirs Proust and Mann, his instinctive affinity lies with the relatively short-winded Calvino and Borges, philosophical artificers of boxes within boxes. Pamuk's boxes are bigger, but the toylike feeling persists, of craftsmanship exulting in its powers....This [is a] curious, protracted thriller...."

Review

Richard Eder - New York Times Book Review
"Readers will have spells of feeling lost and miserable in a deliberate unreliability that so mirrors its subject: a world governed by fog. They will also be lofted by the paradoxical lightness and gaiety of the writing, by the wonderfully winding talk perpetually about to turn a corner, and by the stubborn humanity in the characters' maneuvers to survive."

Review

Kirkus
"[A] whimsical but provocative exploration of the nature of art in an Islamic society....A rich feast of ideas, images, and lore."

More about the book

MY NAME IS RED is perhaps the apotheosis of Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk's long contemplation of the relationship between Eastern and Western cultures, and the illusive nature of art and identity. Set in 16th-century Istanbul, the novel revolves around an artistic commission by the Sultan Murat III: a scandalous book that uses Western artistic techniques rather than the Islamic-sanctioned ancient art of purely flat and decorative miniatures. One of the Sultan's four primary artists has been murdered, and each chapter uses a different narrator to illuminate the motives for his death, motives that are intrinsically tied to Turkish history, religion, and humanity's understanding of reality through art. Full of his trademark inventiveness, Pamuk's narrators are far from ordinary--they include the corpse of the murdered man, a coin, and even the color crimson itself. Though the conceptual framework of the novel--in the tradition of James Joyce or William Faulkner--is ingeniously conceived, Pamuk's book overflows with profound feeling and lush description, and represents a brilliant fusion of the intellectual and emotional powers of literature.