My Name Is Red

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Summary: My Name is Red
Review: It's a story of whodunnit case set beautifully in the late 16th century Istanbul.It also depicts the ongoing clash between east and west.
The storyline somewhat resembles Umberto Eco's "the name of the rose" but it also has its own authenticity in its own merits,I think.
And it is also said that some items are related to the Encyclopedia Judaica like the Jews in Istanbul were wearing red hats at that time which is also said to give the novel its name.There is nothing unusual here since Orhan Pamuk himself is jewish.

Rating:
Summary: thrilling, breathtaking
Review: it's one of the best book i've read and till the end you don't know who is the murderer (is there one?) it shows the superiority of East over West, a must for knowledgeable people.

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Summary: Perspective, density, the ability to see.
Review: Early in the novel, a miniaturist named Olive says "Through our colors, paints, art and love, we remember that Allah had commanded us to "See"!". I found myself thinking about that line repeatedly later throughout this wonderful book.

First, be warned, this is not a quick read by any means. There is no omniscient narrative voice to smooth the path for the reader. Instead, the reader is presented with multiple voices and perspectives-- some from the characters themselves, some from the illustrations in the books, one memorable passage is even told from the point of view of ink itself.

And while there is a story and the story is important (the commissioning of the religiously dubious book by the Sultan, the subsequent murderer of Elegant Effendi, Black's efforts to find the killer, save the book and win the hand of his cousin Shekure), it is not as though the story were the book and it only orders the flow of the multiple perspectives rather than really making the reading of the book easier.

Pamuk has been much cited in the press lately, not only for his views as a novelist, but also for his views on what he calls the 'absurd' conflict between east and west. Through using the medium of the narrow world of the miniaturists in the 16th century, Pamuk gently addresses the issue of heresy and pollution by stressing the continual influence of other cultures on the classical miniature form and by making clear through debates on individuality, blindness, and style where many of the differences between east and west are located. And also, of course, the similarities are revealed in the same manner.

I found _My Name Is Red_ to be by turns funny, thought-provoking and moving. I was never bored even though it took me perhaps three times as long to read as another book of similar length.

Some tips to the reader: read and even re-read the chronology at the back. Also, the publisher's web site for the book has some images of the paintings referred to by the characters. I found it useful to refer to them after I'd finished the novel.

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Summary: Mystery, Mercy, and the Ottoman Court Painters
Review: The year is 1591. Sultan Murat III rules an empire that stretches from the Danube to the Nile, from the Barbary Coast of Algeria to the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates. As a patron of the arts, the Sultan commissions an illuminated manuscript that comes close to violating the Koran's ban on the depiction of living creatures.

At the Last Judgment, those who have depicted men and animals will be required by Allah to bring them to life. As they cannot but fail to usurp this function of the Creator, they are cast into hell for their mimicry of His divine powers.

The tight world of those few artists who are executing the Sultan's commission glance fearfully over their shoulders as a fundamentalist cleric, the Nusret Hoja of Erzurum, mounts an increasingly violent campaign against the "blasphemers" and "heretics." When the body of Elegant Effendi, the well-known gilder of manuscripts is found dead in a well, the artists decide to take action.

It is the second death, that of Enishte Effendi, that finally results in action. The miniaturist (as these artists are referred to throughout the book) known as Black is enlisted by Enishte's daughter Shekure to find the killer. Black had loved Shekure for many years unrequited, but with Enishte gone, Shekure promises to marry him if he succeeds.

In his novel THE BLACK BOOK, the author writes: "... the only way to be one's self is by becoming another or by losing one's way in another's tales." Orhan Pamuk in this novel tells his story through the mouths of twenty narrators, ranging from the main characters to the corpse of Elegant Effendi, the color red, a dog, a horse, Satan, Death, a tree, an unnamed woman, and so on. Where this technique could be expected to fragment the tale so that it becomes difficult to follow, here it succeeds brilliantly. The story passes from one narrator to the other almost seamlessly, and the trail is never lost.

One result of this technique is an incredible feeling of density and richness. Sixteenth century Istanbul is depicted here from its beggars to its coffee shops and wandering clothing merchants. From the Sultan's palace to an eerie abandoned dervish lodge, we see the gamut of Turkish society at the height of its power -- and at a point where it was beginning to be influenced by its old enemy, Christendom.

In the afterlife, Enishte hazards to ask Allah a question:

"Over the last twenty years of my life, I've been influenced by the infidel illustrations that I saw in Venice. There was even a time when I wanted my own portrait painted in that method and style, but I was afraid. Instead, I later had Your World, Your Subjects and Our Sultan, Your Shadow on Earth, depicted in the manner of the infidel Franks."

Enishte does not recall the deity's voice, but the answer comes through loud and clear:

"East and West belong to me."

He hazards one more question, about the meaning of it all. This time, the one word answer sounds like "mystery" or "mercy" -- he is not sure which.

This is a great novel that deserves to be read by anyone who seeks by understanding to bridge the widening rift between our civilizations.

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Summary: Who is red?
Review: Readers of Encyclopedia Judaica should remember all items related to Jews in Ottoman Empire. I observe that, Mr. Pamuk flourishingly evaluates the material in Encyclopedia Judaica.

People are wondering the significance of "red". First thing in my mind is that, Jews were wearing red hats in Istanbul at those times. With the title of the book, Mr. Pamuk gives his message:))

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Summary: "To God belongs the East and the West."
Review: Orhan Pamuk uses a tight and clever plot to expound on how art and society are entwined. The setting he uses is Ottoman Istanbul of the 1590s. Even though the murder mystery qualifies as a whodunnit in its own right, there is a lot more going on. This might book might be a difficult read for people not interested in art or middle eastern culture. But it is certainly worth a try and if you survive the first 20 pages of this multiple-perspective art house page turner, you are in for a memorable ride.

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Summary: There may be a good novel in there
Review: .. but I could not find it.

I love mysteries and foreign lands, picked up 'My Name Is Red', by Orhan Pamuk, translated from the Turkish. Set in Istanbul around 1600AD, it's a murder mystery-romance in which unfortunately any sympathy for any of the main characters is slowly eroded to where I didn't care if the murderer gets caught nor if the lovers get together. Kind of gritted my teeth to finish it. But I know more about the inner workings of the Islamic miniaturist painter's life than I ever wanted.

It's too bad that the translator didn't provide some badly needed editing. Like a storyteller in love with his own voice, Orhan Pamuk simply doesn't know when to shut up. I plowed through seemingly endless chapters written from not only the main character's viewpoints, but from a dog and Satan.

This novel could have shed about 1/3 its bulk and been a much more satisfying read.

NOT recommended unless you have the patience of a saint.

Karl Moeller somewhere in the desert

Rating:
Summary: Historical classic
Review: Art, history, religion, and a love story woven into a masterpiece. The comparisons with NAME OF THE ROSE, are very apt. Well worth the effort to read and it's not an easy read.

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Summary: an artist of the floating world
Review: Of Miniatures and Murder
One of these days, Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk will be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. As is usually the case with this prize, it will be given for all the wrong reasons: a Muslim may be needed that year or the clash of East and West may demand a winner who is from both cultures. That said, it will be an honour long overdue and richly deserved. For 20 years, Pamuk has been spinning his postmodern yarns in Istanbul and getting better with every book. In Turkey, he is a publishing sensation (after his latest book his publisher successfully sued a newspaper which refused to believe the sales figures) and his books have been translated into 20 languages. His latest effort My Name is Red is a magnificent historical mystery, which manages to be a thrilling page-turner as well as a dense novel of ideas.
The book is set in Istanbul in 1591. The Ottoman Empire is a major superpower, perhaps the most powerful in the world, and the sultan has commissioned a new book of paintings. These are not just any paintings. They are to be rendered in the 'new' Venetian manner, a style that flies in the face of all the rules of Islamic miniature art. The book is so secret that even the miniaturists working on it are unaware of the whole picture. Only Enishte Effendi, the official supervising the book, knows how all the pieces will fit. But rumours of heresy and blasphemy swirl around the project and an extremist preacher, incensed at the new western influences, is preaching murder.
When one of the miniaturists working on the book is killed, anyone could be the killer. Was he killed because he was committing heresy? Or because he had discovered heresy and was about to unmask the heretic? Enishte and his lovesick nephew 'Black Effendi' are racing to find the killer when another murder is committed. Meanwhile, there are other complications: Black Effendi is in love with Enishte's widowed daughter Shekure, who is also being pursued by her brother-in-law. She is flirting with both through a Jewess who carries her messages through the streets of Istanbul. And always in the background is the conflict between the self-contained and insular Islamic civilisation and the brash and uncomfortably individualistic new challengers from Europe.
The book is written in the form of 59 short chapters, each a monologue by one of the characters. Most of the chapters are narrated by the central characters - Black Effendi, Enishte, Shekure, the miniaturists and so on - but several are unconventional. The opening chapter is narrated by a freshly killed corpse, while others are narrated by the picture of a dog, a horse and even the colour red, from which comes the title of the book. The multiple perspectives work very well as a murder mystery - the narration by the killer, for example, invites the reader to guess at his identity through his style - and help Pamuk to push his complex cultural debate much better than any single perspective could have managed.
The amazing thing is that the book works at every level. As a murder mystery, it is thrilling and loaded with suspense, while as an allegory on the clash of cultures, it is masterful and subtle. Pamuk is far from being didactic or one-dimensional. The Ottoman world is indeed depicted as a despotic and insular culture, increasingly constrained and hampered by rigid and oppressive orthodoxies. But the orthodoxies have their own internal justifications and rationalisations. In a world where "the center will not hold and mere anarchy is loosed upon the world", these certainties do have an appeal. Pamuk is too much of a postmodern intellectual to actually embrace these ideologies but he is not above suspecting that in all this 'progress' something has also been lost. Not all the illusions are on Don Quixote's side, some are also on the side of those who jeer at him.
In 1999, the Turkish government tried to give Pamuk the title of state artist, which he refused by saying: "For years I have been criticizing the state for putting authors in jail, for only trying to solve the Kurdish problem by force, and for its narrow-minded nationalism, I don't know why they tried to give me the prize." After September 11, he wrote: "The western world is scarcely aware of this overwhelming humiliation experienced by most of the world's population, which they have to overcome without losing their common sense and without being seduced by terrorists, extreme nationalists or fundamentalists. Neither the magical realistic novels that endow poverty and foolishness with charm, nor the exoticism of popular travel literature manage to fathom this cursed private sphere."
Near the end of the book, one of the miniaturists offers what could be Pamuk's own credo: "An artist should never succumb to hubris of any kind, he should simply paint the way he sees fit rather than troubling over East or West." Pamuk spent five years writing My Name is Red, one must spend a few days reading it. It will clearly not be a disappointing experience.

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Summary: An Eloquent Dissertation on Perspectives
Review: Orhan Pamuk's "My Name is Red" is a novel of many layers rolled into one -- it is a murder mystery, a love story, and most of all, a thesis of ideas. In this whodunit about the murder of a miniaturist engaged in a secret project commissioned by the Ottoman Sultan and the subsequent race to find the killer, Pamuk's book is special as the tale is told in first person narration from the point of view of the key characters. Through their reflections, alot is revealed on their at times competing values in relation to art and money, the comparison on artistic techniques of East and West, history, honour, religion, respect and preserving the old vs. admitting the new. Pamuk's historical novel successfully recreates the society in Ottoman times and the relationships between the key characters slowly unravel to reveal the world of miniaturists engaged by the Sultan in the royal workshop, the intrigues, jealousies and the love for art which bind them together. The gradual disappearance of Persian artistic traditions and the invasion of Western artistic form and style is a poignant reminder of the things society give up in the name of progress and how one culture gets obliterated and substituted by another through time. This suspenseful, engaging and thrilling book is a winner as it can be read on many levels which run independent of one another but overlap as well. The dilemmas on identity, the tensions between East and West, the sacrifice for progress and religion are still prevalent and significant to the Turkey of today. Pamuk's spiralling dissertation is a continuation of the themes discussed in "The White Castle" and is a must-read for anyone interested in Turkey culture, anxious for food for thought or a suspenseful read.