My Name is Red is as gorgeous as these illuminations.The narrative flows with the weight of such a lush artistic style.It is a dazzling brilliance that creates a languid beauty......that bogs the story down so much I couldn't tell you what happened. But this is a "lush" read and my review shouldn't dissuade you from reading it.

I am in two minds about this book.Obviously, it is an important work. It showcases the miniaturist tradition of the Islamic world, and uses the cloistered world of miniaturists to explore the difference in philosophies between the East and the West. It was all the more interesting to me because I have been fascinated by this difference ever since I began viewing paintings with serious interest. In the East, "perspective" does not exist: the painting flows seamlessy over space and time whereas in...

This is a fantastic book by Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk which explores the relationship between art and religion ad between imagery and idolatry. Set in the 16th century, we are transported into an Istanbul of the Ottoman empire with a murder mystery told in the voices of the characters (and sometimes these are drawings in the books or just concepts) that inhabit the story. Its primary characters feel very real and the buildup to the big reveal at the end makes the book a real page turner. I

I tried very hard to really like this book. But, I suppose it's impossible to succeed in everything.My Name Is Red is both historical fiction and a murder mystery. It takes place in 1591 (according to the timeline at the end of the book). The over-arching motion of the plot centers around the death of a master miniturist in the Sultan's court. The death is revealed in the first chapter, though the reasons surrounding the his death are much slower in being revealed. What is known, almost at the o...

Generally, when a book starts out with a chapter entitled "I Am A Corpse," you know it's going to be pretty good. The novel is set up so that each chapter introduces a different narrator, including (but not limited to), Black, Black's uncle, Shekure, a dog, a horse, the murderer and various artists in the workshop. This type of structure for a mystery novel isn't new--Wilkie Collins, for example, employed it several times, most notably in The Moonstone--and it is an effective way to structure a

I believe in the fact that there is nothing as fact, everything the eye beholds is the individual reality of the beholder, what the eye sees and mind translates it as sight is a phenomenon of individual perception, and this is where the artist discerns himself from a mere beholder, he is, simultaneously a beholder and a creator, or we may say the re-creator, his strokes alive the scenery, his colors spark the stars, his art immortals the mortality of life, and his hands vouchsafe timelessness to...

This book is as much about art as it is a historical novel. First the novel. A tale of miniaturist painters in Istanbul during the late 1500’s. The deceased master’s daughter is in a religious and political limbo: her soldier husband has been missing for four years, but with no body and no witnesses to his death, she can’t get a divorce and move on with her life. She wants to find a new husband and a father for her two young boys and get away from the amorous intentions of her husband’s brother....

My fickle heart longs for the West when I'm in the East and for the East when I'm in the West.My other parts insist I be a woman when I'm a man and a man when I'm a woman.How difficult it is being human, even worse is living a human's life.I only want to amuse myself frontside and backside, to be Eastern and Western both.This is Pamuk's enduring, never ending obsession. He's written fiction and non-fiction, journal articles and newspaper bites, and given endless interviews on this theme. He's ev...

This was a joy to read.I read a lot of good books: good stories, good characterization, good dialogue, good writing. It’s a rare treat when I can sit down and thoroughly enjoy a book because the writer has not just crafted a good book, but has gone on to create art, to invest his or her time and energy and creativity and genius into a wonderful work, something that is designed to be better than good.Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk’s 1998 novel, this edition translated into English by Erdag M. Goknar,...

Benim Adım Kırmızı = My Name is Red, Orhan Pamuk My Name Is Red is a 1998 Turkish novel by writer Orhan Pamuk translated into English by Erdağ Göknar in 2001. Pamuk would later receive the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature. The novel, concerning miniaturists in the Ottoman Empire of 1591, established Pamuk's international reputation and contributed to his Nobel Prize. The influences of Joyce, Kafka, Mann, Nabokov and Proust and above all Eco can be seen in Pamuk's work.تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز هشتم

On-a-high version:I am called Black, I longed for my dearest Shekure for twelve years;I, Shekure, not quite sure what was I doing in this story; I am called Butterfly, I was the one who drew the Death and Mia thought I was the murderer;I am called Stork, I was the one who drew the Tree and Butterfly always envy me as I was more talented without the help from our master;I am called Olive, I was the one who rendered the Satan and drew the exquisite horse;I am your beloved uncle, I was preparing a

During nine snowy, cold, winter days in the fabulous city of Istanbul the capital of the Ottoman Empire, at its height in the reign of Sultan Murat 111 there occurred a brutal murder, (not the last one ) the year 1591. At the bottom of an abandoned well the mangled body of Elegant Effendi nicknamed Red, a miniaturist who had worked for the Sultan is found but not before the corpse tells his sad story. How the victim was lured by a person which was thought a close friend, with promises of riches

Arguably the best novel of Orhan Pamuk. Set in Istanbul during the height of Ottoman power, this novel is a tribute to the art of painting as well as a fascinating murder mystery which will keep you hooked till the end. The unusual narrative is felt with full force right from the start - as you read the first chapter, starting with the voice of a corpse at the bottom of the well wondering who was the wretched man that killed him. Then ensues a beautiful exploration of the 16th century Istanbul's...

This is a perfect novel, I realised, quite a few years after I finished it. It has art and crime and passion and plot and characters and style and all that jazz. And it appeals to grumpy people past prime as well as passionate adolescents discovering the universe of literature for the first time.When a student of mine, aged 15, stormed into the library and declared this was the best book ever, I felt strangely sad I hadn't thought more about it since I read and loved it some years ago. When the

Some stories sink their teeth into your gut and don't let go. Others offer more cerebral pleasures (works by Borges comes to mind). This is more the second than the first, and I'm okay with that. First and foremost, there are quite a few chapters in this book that read more like a chapter in a book on the history of Islamic illuminations than a chapter in a novel. In this respect, however, Pamuk can legitimately point to past antecedents in this vein: Tolstoy for one in War and Peace, Melville f...

I could not help but think of the film "Daisies" (“Sedmikrasky,” dir. Vera Chytilova), that shameless classic of the Czech New Wave while reading Ohran Pamuk’s My Name is Red. That brilliant & psychedelic film of the 60’s portrays two incessant, silly girls who seem to want to emphasize their existence by playing pranks on other people and being undeniably obnoxious. They are terrified at the idea of being forgotten—of not existing. Similarly, in Pamuk’s epic novel of conspiring miniaturists, of...

I bought this book because the first line/page sounded original and intriguing. However I soon found this novel tedious and boring. It just wasn't my cup of tea.

Saying I liked it or didn't like it doesn't really capture the complexity of my experience with this book. Part murder mystery, part love story, and part historical novel about the book-art in the ottoman empire....I thought it was right up my alley. Maybe I expected to have more of an emotional connection but it was all very intellectual and somehow that frustrated me...churned up my stomach which was quite contented on the diet of all-fluff, all-the-time. Reading this was like eating roasted b...

Even if you are away from your lover if a lover’s face survives emblazoned on your heart, the world is still your home. An Impetuous response In October 2019-----------------------------If your name is red, my name is blue. You can glide from my hand like sand; I will stick on your soul like glue. This book is dispersed with such a sumptuous redness that after reading it my entire self was tinged with azure… Not with red but with azure… because the color changes color when it evaporates from the...

"Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow.""For the sake of a delightful and convincing story, there isn't a lie Orhan wouldn't deign to tell." This is a lot like 'The Name of the Rose' a very, very, very well researched historical crime fiction where some people, who aren't exactly detective, are searching for a criminal. There are other similarities too, both books have a very big library the access to which is restricted. Both make commentary on position of wom