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My Name Is Red
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 20 hrs and 36 mins
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Publisher's summary
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 Erdag Goknar.
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Susanna Dallet is the daughter of a Flemish painter and wife to a philandering husband, living in the court of Henry VIII. When her husband is murdered, Susanna is suddenly left with a household to provide for and nothing to her name. Her days of anonymity are over when Susanna finds that guild rules preventing women from working do not apply at the king’s court, and she manages to secure a position as a miniature-portrait painter. Before long, she has not only made a name for herself, she is close to those who surround Princess Mary. But even in this lofty company, Susanna is not safe....
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DON'T FALL FOR THE PRINT VERSION AMAZON REVIEWS
- By The Louligan on 03-06-14
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The Fairy Tales of Herman Hesse
- By: Hermann Hesse, Jack Zipes - translator
- Narrated by: Donovan
- Length: 2 hrs and 53 mins
- Highlights
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Step into a world of visions, philosophy, and passion in which dreamers, seekers, princesses, and wandering poets dwell. The 6 wonderful, romantic tales in this collection are reminiscent of ancient Oriental and German fairy tales. The selections, "The Poet," "The Flute Dream," "The Dwarf," "Faldum," "Ziegler," and "Dream of the Gods" were hand-picked by the narrator, legendary folk and rock musician Donovan.
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The reading is quiet and heavenly
- By Atalante Lemuria on 11-12-20
By: Hermann Hesse, and others
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The Leopard
- A Novel
- By: Giuseppe di Lampedusa, Archibald Colquhuon - translator
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in the 1860s, The Leopard tells the spellbinding story of a decadent, dying Sicilian aristocracy threatened by the approaching forces of democracy and revolution. The dramatic sweep and richness of observation, the seamless intertwining of public and private worlds, and the grasp of human frailty imbue The Leopard with its particular melancholy beauty and power, and place it among the greatest historical novels of our time.
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Timeless
- By Robert Massarella on 12-05-23
By: Giuseppe di Lampedusa, and others
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The Satanic Verses
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Sam Dastor
- Length: 21 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Inextricably linked with the fatwa called against its author in the wake of the novel’s publication, The Satanic Verses is, beyond that, a rich showcase for Salman Rushdie’s comic sensibilities, cultural observations, and unparalleled mastery of language. The book begins with two Indians plummeting from the sky after the explosion of their airliner, and proceeds through a series of metamorphoses, dreams and revelations.
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Use an audiobook to really enjoy Satanic Verses
- By David Edelberg on 11-24-12
By: Salman Rushdie
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Justine
- The Alexandria Quartet
- By: Lawrence Durrell
- Narrated by: Jack Klaff
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Set amid the corrupt glamour and multiplying intrigues of Alexandria, Egypt, in the 1930s and 1940s, the novels of Durrell's Alexandria Quartet (of which this is the first) follow the shifting alliances - sexual, cultural and political - of a group of quite varied characters. In Justine, an English schoolmaster and struggling writer falls in love with a beautiful and mysterious Jewish woman who is married to a wealthy Egyptian.
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Ruined...
- By Murasaki on 05-29-11
By: Lawrence Durrell
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The Red-Haired Woman
- A Novel
- By: Orhan Pamuk
- Narrated by: John Lee, Katharine Lee McEwan
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
On the outskirts of a town 30 miles from Istanbul, a master well digger and his young apprentice are hired to find water on a barren plain. As they struggle in the summer heat, excavating without luck meter by meter, the two will develop a filial bond neither has known before - not the poor middle-aged bachelor nor the middle-class boy whose father disappeared after being arrested for politically subversive activities. The pair will come to depend on each other and exchange stories reflecting disparate views of the world.
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Drags On
- By T. Conrad on 10-25-17
By: Orhan Pamuk
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The Diary of a Madman and Other Stories
- By: Nikolai Gogol
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
- Length: 17 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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The Diary of a Madman and Other Stories is a bizarre and colorful collection containing the finest short stories by the iconic Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. From the witty and Kafkaesque "The Nose", where a civil servant wakes up one day to find his nose missing, to the moving and evocative "The Overcoat", about a reclusive man whose only ambition is to replace his old, threadbare coat, Gogol gives us a unique take on the absurd.
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Brilliant writer, fantastic narration, plus TOC
- By Kory Grow on 04-01-22
By: Nikolai Gogol
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Birds Without Wings
- By: Louis de Bernieres
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 23 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Birds Without Wings is the story of a small town in Anatolia in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire told in the richly varied voices of the men and women (Armenians, Christians, and Muslims) whose lives are intertwined and rooted there: Iskander, the potter and local fount of wisdom; Philotei, the Christian girl of legendary beauty, courted almost from infancy by Ibrahim the goatherd, a great love that culminates in tragedy and madness; and many more.
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Not for the faint of heart
- By a on 01-03-05
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In the Name of the Family
- A Novel
- By: Sarah Dunant
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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It is 1502, and Rodrigo Borgia, a self-confessed womanizer and master of political corruption, is now on the papal throne as Alexander VI. His daughter Lucrezia, age 22 - already three times married and a pawn in her father's plans - is discovering her own power. And then there is his son Cesare Borgia, brilliant, ruthless, and increasingly unstable; it is his relationship with Machiavelli that gives the Florentine diplomat a master class in the dark arts of power and politics.
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One of the best historical fiction novels
- By GrandmaNurseHeather on 04-13-17
By: Sarah Dunant
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Galilee
- By: Clive Barker
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 23 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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The Barbarossa family’s roots are far more ancient and ethereal, but they are bound to the Gearys by a shared history of murder, insanity, and adultery. When Rachel Geary and Galilee, the seductive prince of the Barbarossa clan, fall in love, they unleash powerful enmities that could destroy both dynasties. Shorter and more conventional than some of Barker’s other work, this novel is especially rich with complex, passionate, three-dimensional characters, lush settings, and elegant language.
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An Audiophile's Dream
- By Joseph on 09-01-11
By: Clive Barker
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A Tale of Love and Darkness
- By: Amos Oz
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 23 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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It is the story of a boy growing up in the war-torn Jerusalem of the 40s and 50s in a small apartment crowded with books in 12 languages and relatives speaking nearly as many. His mother and father, both wonderful people, were ill-suited to each other. When Oz was 12 and a half years old, his mother committed suicide - a tragedy that was to change his life. He leaves the constraints of the family and the community of dreamers, scholars, and failed businessmen to join a kibbutz.
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His life was interesting, but not his memoir
- By DR Harle on 01-27-19
By: Amos Oz
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Following years of lonely political exile in Western Europe, Ka, a middle-aged poet, returns to Istanbul to attend his mother's funeral. Only partly recognizing this place of his cultured, middle-class youth, he is even more disoriented by news of strange events in the wider country: a wave of suicides among girls forbidden to wear their head scarves at school.
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one of the very best I've ever heard
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A shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world’s great cities, by its foremost writer. Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholy—or hüzün—that all Istanbullus share.
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Terrible pronunciation
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Galip is a lawyer living in Istanbul. His wife, the detective novel-loving Ruya, has disappeared. Could she have left him for her ex-husband or Celâl, a popular newspaper columnist? But Celâl, too, seems to have vanished. As Galip investigates, he finds himself assuming the enviable Celâl's identity, wearing his clothes, answering his phone calls, even writing his columns. Galip pursues every conceivable clue, but the nature of the mystery keeps changing, and when he receives a death threat, he begins to fear the worst.
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Pamuk read by John Lee....
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On the outskirts of a town 30 miles from Istanbul, a master well digger and his young apprentice are hired to find water on a barren plain. As they struggle in the summer heat, excavating without luck meter by meter, the two will develop a filial bond neither has known before - not the poor middle-aged bachelor nor the middle-class boy whose father disappeared after being arrested for politically subversive activities. The pair will come to depend on each other and exchange stories reflecting disparate views of the world.
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Drags On
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In the 17th century, a young Italian scholar sailing from Venice to Naples is taken prisoner and delivered to Constantinople. There he falls into the custody of a scholar known as Hoja - "master" - a man who is his exact double. In the years that follow, the slave instructs his master in Western science and technology, from medicine to pyrotechnics. But Hoja wants to know more: why he and his captive are the persons they are and whether, given knowledge of each other's most intimate secrets, they could actually exchange identities.
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INTERESTING
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Kemal, scion of one of the city's wealthiest families, is about to become engaged to Sibel, daughter of another prominent family, when he encounters Füsun, a beautiful shopgirl and a distant relation. Once the long-lost cousins violate the code of virginity, a rift begins to open between Kemal and the world of the Westernized Istanbul bourgeosie - a world, as he lovingly describes it, with opulent parties and clubs, society gossip, picnics, and mansions on the Bosphorus, infused with the melancholy of decay.
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one of the very best I've ever heard
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A shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world’s great cities, by its foremost writer. Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholy—or hüzün—that all Istanbullus share.
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Terrible pronunciation
- By K. Jaynes on 02-25-18
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Galip is a lawyer living in Istanbul. His wife, the detective novel-loving Ruya, has disappeared. Could she have left him for her ex-husband or Celâl, a popular newspaper columnist? But Celâl, too, seems to have vanished. As Galip investigates, he finds himself assuming the enviable Celâl's identity, wearing his clothes, answering his phone calls, even writing his columns. Galip pursues every conceivable clue, but the nature of the mystery keeps changing, and when he receives a death threat, he begins to fear the worst.
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Pamuk read by John Lee....
- By Murasaki on 05-26-18
By: Orhan Pamuk, and others
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The Red-Haired Woman
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On the outskirts of a town 30 miles from Istanbul, a master well digger and his young apprentice are hired to find water on a barren plain. As they struggle in the summer heat, excavating without luck meter by meter, the two will develop a filial bond neither has known before - not the poor middle-aged bachelor nor the middle-class boy whose father disappeared after being arrested for politically subversive activities. The pair will come to depend on each other and exchange stories reflecting disparate views of the world.
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Drags On
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It is April 1900, in the Levant, on the imaginary island of Mingheria—the twenty-ninth state of the Ottoman Empire—located in the eastern Mediterranean between Crete and Cyprus. Half the population is Muslim, the other half are Orthodox Greeks, and tension is high between the two. When a plague arrives—brought either by Muslim pilgrims returning from the Mecca or by merchant vessels coming from Alexandria—the island revolts.
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A great novel spoilt by an over dramatic narration
- By Amazon Customer on 05-02-23
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A Strangeness in My Mind
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Since his boyhood Mevlut Karataş has fantasized about what his life would become. Not getting as far in school as he'd hoped, at the age of 12 he comes to Istanbul - "the center of the world" - and is immediately enthralled by both the old city that is disappearing and the new one that is fast being built. He follows his father's trade, selling boza on the street and hoping to become rich like other villagers who have settled the desolate hills outside the booming metropolis. But luck never seems to be on Mevlut's side.
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A Strangeness in My Mind: A Delight for my Commute
- By Andrea Frank on 03-19-16
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Silent House
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The moving story of a Turkish family gathering in the shadow of the impending military coup of 1980. In an old mansion in a village near Istanbul, a widow awaits the annual visit of her grandchildren. She has lived in the village for decades, ever since her husband, an idealistic young doctor, first arrived to serve the poor fishermen. Now mostly bedridden, she is attended by her faithful servant Recep, a dwarf - and her late husband's illegitimate son.
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Life is too short to struggle with this book
- By Nevena Hristozova on 02-23-24
By: Orhan Pamuk, and others
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The Architect's Apprentice
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- Unabridged
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In 1540, 12-year-old Jahan arrives in Istanbul. As an animal tamer in the sultan's menagerie, he looks after the exceptionally smart elephant Chota and befriends (and falls for) the sultan's beautiful daughter Princess Mihrimah. A palace education leads Jahan to Mimar Sinan, the empire's chief architect, who takes Jahan under his wing as they construct (with Chota's help) some of the most magnificent buildings in history.
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I feel like I should like it more than I do
- By nyog on 04-19-17
By: Elif Shafak
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Me llamo Rojo [My Name Is Red]
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- Unabridged
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El Sultán ha pedido a los artistas más reputados del país un gran libro que celebre las glorias de su reino. Su tarea será iluminar esa obra al estilo europeo. Pero como el arte figurativo puede ser considerado una ofensa al Islam, el encargo se convierte a todas luces en una proposición peligrosa. La élite gobernante no debe conocer el alcance ni la naturaleza de ese proyecto, y el pánico estalla cuando uno de los miniaturistas desaparece. La única pista para resolver el misterio -¿quizá un crimen?- reside en las miniaturas inacabadas.
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Rara Historia
- By Anonymous User on 05-06-22
By: Orhan Pamuk
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Birds Without Wings
- By: Louis de Bernieres
- Narrated by: John Lee
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- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Birds Without Wings is the story of a small town in Anatolia in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire told in the richly varied voices of the men and women (Armenians, Christians, and Muslims) whose lives are intertwined and rooted there: Iskander, the potter and local fount of wisdom; Philotei, the Christian girl of legendary beauty, courted almost from infancy by Ibrahim the goatherd, a great love that culminates in tragedy and madness; and many more.
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Not for the faint of heart
- By a on 01-03-05
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Istanbul
- Memories of a City
- By: Orhan Pamuk, Maureen Freely
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Turkey's greatest living novelist guides us through the monuments and lost paradises, dilapidated Ottoman villas, back streets, and waterways of Istanbul - the city of his birth and the home of his imagination.
By: Orhan Pamuk, and others
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Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities
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- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
From the Koran to Shakespeare, this city with three names - Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul - resonates as an idea and a place, real and imagined. Standing as the gateway between East and West, North and South, it has been the capital city of the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman Empires. For much of its history it was the very center of the world, known simply as "The City", but, as Bettany Hughes reveals, Istanbul is not just a city but a global story.
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A daunting undertaking pulled off superlatively
- By SGS on 12-24-17
By: Bettany Hughes
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The Bastard of Istanbul
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
In her second novel written in English, Elif Shafak confronts her country's violent past in a vivid and colorful tale set in both Turkey and the United States. At its center is the "bastard" of the title, Asya, a 19-year-old woman who loves Johnny Cash and the French Existentialists, and the four sisters of the Kazanci family who all live together in an extended household in Istanbul.
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A tender gift from far away
- By Barbara on 11-07-07
By: Elif Shafak
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Istanbul Passage
- A Novel
- By: Joseph Kanon
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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A neutral capital straddling Europe and Asia, Istanbul has spent the war as a magnet for refugees and spies. Even American businessman Leon Bauer has been drawn into this shadow world, doing undercover odd jobs and courier runs for the Allied war effort. Now, as the espionage community begins to pack up and an apprehensive city prepares for the grim realities of postwar life, he is given one more assignment, a routine job that goes fatally wrong, plunging him into a tangle of intrigue and moral confusion.
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What choice do you make when all options are bad?
- By Maine Colonial 🌲 on 06-08-12
By: Joseph Kanon
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Istanbul
- By: Orhan Pamuk
- Narrated by: Ulrich Noethen
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Orhan Pamuks Istanbul ist erfüllt von einer zauberhaften Melancholie des Niedergangs. Hier ist er aufgewachsen im Kreise seiner Großfamilie...
By: Orhan Pamuk
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Palace Walk
- Cairo Trilogy Series, Book 1
- By: Naguib Mahfouz, William Maynard Hutchins - translator, Olive E. Kenny - translator
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 21 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
A national best seller in both hardcover and paperback, the first book of the masterful Cairo Trilogy introduces the engrossing saga of a Muslim family in Cairo during Egypt's occupation by British forces in the early 1900s.
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great book, not so great narration
- By Amazon Customer on 02-01-19
By: Naguib Mahfouz, and others
What listeners say about My Name Is Red
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Kathleen
- 05-13-10
Complex and interesting
John Lee is an incredible reader, and a perfect choice for this book. There are around 20 first-person narrators in the book, and Lee performs all their voices superbly, reflecting each one's individuality and unique perspective on the happenings in the novel. These characters (some not even human, like the color red) create a rich tapestry that brings to life this period in Istanbul and the Ottoman Empire, with wit and charm, rather than dry historical narration. This is not a light or easy read, but worth the effort. I found it helpful to borrow the print copy from the library, and occasionally refer to it for the names and spellings of people and places.
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20 people found this helpful
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Overall
- D. Hile
- 03-12-09
An adventure in art, intrigue and culture
I was tempted by this book's description and it did not fail. Along with the murder mistory, it was an adventure in a little known world of art and its contradictions and supports of the prevailing religion as interpreted at the time. It is an interesting exploration of a variety of personalities and motivations. Running through it all is an exceptionally illustrated process of the processes involved in production of art.
If you are homophobic you may want to think twice. While not explicit there is some discussion of sexual ideas that may not be mainstream to many americans.
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10 people found this helpful
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- John L. Moncrief
- 03-12-15
A Dense Story that Stays with You
Not an easy story for me to keep up with in the audio book form due to the Turkish names and the detailed description of Turkish and Persian miniatures and miniaturists, It is the story of a murder within the Ottoman community of court sponsored miniaturists but also an examination of the brutality of Ottoman system and the stultifying effects of an ever narrowing Islamic clerical interpretation of what kind of art is permissible. Although I found the book sometimes tedious and sometimes difficult to follow, it has stayed with since I read it. John Lee is an over-the-top narrator with his old fashioned rolling "r's" and English acting style but his seeming command of Turkish words is amazing as well as his abililty to portray different characters.
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8 people found this helpful
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Dr. Milton Shleperman
- 10-05-13
Interesting But Over-Written
Clearly, Pamuk is a great prose stylist. The book is atmospheric and exotic, and there are parts that were fascinating. But his long metaphysical discussions of the mystical elements of miniaturist painting in 16th century Istanbul are heavy going and take up much of the book. I was reminded of Moby Dick; a great book if you skip over the endless descriptions of whales. On the positive side, the narrator is one of the best I have heard.
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8 people found this helpful
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Chris
- 12-23-14
Effect lost in an audio version?
I loved it and I didn't. Snow by Pamuk is one of my favourite books - poetic, beautifully written, intriguing and historical. However, I read Snow in print and listened to Red on audible. I liked the storyline of Red very much. I found the first person narrative interesting, however, it was easy to lose track of who's voice was being expressed. I thought the narrator had a nice voice, but found very little variance between the characters - e.g. couldn't tell the difference between the voices of Black, the protagonist, from the murderer, and the miniaturists.
I do recommend the book, with the caution that it's not an easy listen if you like to attend to the details of a story. If you like to read print as well, this is probably a book better suited to print.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Amanda
- 03-11-10
Please, Somebody, Make it be Over!
I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE reading...and have NEVER started a book and not finished it. I figure that if someone took the time to write it, the least I can do is take the time to finish it...
Oh how I wish I could bring myself to break my own rule just once. "My Name Is Red" is, without a doubt, the most boring book I've ever "read" in my entire life. It's slow, repetitive, and confusing. I'm almost 2/3 through and can't imagine how I'll find the strength to finish the last 1/3. Besides, I REALLY don't care how it ends (even if someone just told me the ending without having to go through the torture of listening to the rest). I should have paid attention to the other reviewers. They weren't lying.
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7 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Amazon Customer
- 08-23-09
Good story, but fairly repetitive.
Story is pretty fascinating, and gives a good peek at the period -- but there are a lot of very repetitive lines - gets tedious occasionally.
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- Lynn
- 12-04-09
Tedious
this book was recommended by one of my art professors. It was sort of interesting from an artist's perspective, but it could have been about half as long. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't interested in art.
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- Jefferson
- 10-10-16
"to have a style is to be worse than a murderer"
"I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well." So begins Orhan Pamuk's novel My Name Is Red (1998). The year is 1591, and snowy Istanbul is plagued by devalued currency, economic hardship, never-ending war, and a firebrand fundamentalist preacher who's blaming the woes on coffeehouses, dervishes, and paintings (especially those following the realistic, individual, and sacrilegious style, perspective, and portraiture of the infidel Europeans), and demanding a return to the Koran. Yet the Sultan has commissioned a secret illustrated book in the "Frankish" style to celebrate the 1000-year anniversary of the Hegira and to be an intimidating present for the Doge of Venice, impressing him with the material and spiritual power of the Ottoman Empire. And one of the miniaturists working on the book has gone missing.
When it becomes clear that the Sultan's book is involved with the artist's murder, we might recall The Name of the Rose (1980), especially because Pamuk works in to My Name Is Red so much cultural, religious, and art history and the "mystery" is not dealt with in the familiar manner of the mystery genre. Instead of hunting for a murderer, characters debate theories about art, tell parables about perception, examine exquisite illustrated books, and try to get married. Perhaps Pamuk's point is that art and love are at least as important as solving crimes.
He tells his story via an assortment of first-person narrators, including pictures with attitudes (a tree, a coin, a horse, Satan, etc.); the miniaturist colleagues of the victim (one of whom is the murderer); Esther, a Jewess "clothier-cum-matchmaker" whose true business is lovers and letters; Shekure, a beautiful, young, and probably widowed mother with two obstreperous sons; and Black, the "detective" protagonist, a secretary who has returned to Istanbul after an absence of twelve years and is tasked by his maternal uncle--Shekure's father--with investigating the artists, and so on. Some are one-chapter narrators and some reappear, like Black, who narrates at least twice as many chapters as any other character.
The characters recount and describe numerous tales and illustrations that comment on the matter of the novel. The star-crossed Persian lovers Shirin and Husrev are alluded to about 35 times. As a character says at one point, "All fables are anyone's fables." The narrators know that we are reading their words, which affords Pamuk opportunities for meta-fictional riffs on reality, stories, "truth," and so on. The novel, then, is a murder mystery and a love story enveloped in an exploration of art, including the nature of personal and cultural style, the roles of time, money, and perception, and the conflicts between innovation and tradition, individuality and universality, east and west, calligraphy and illustrations, and painting what the eyes see and painting what Allah sees.
A current of despair runs through the book, for the traditional art of the Ottoman illustrators will be superseded by that of European artists, and "every single work made in this world will vanish in fires, be destroyed by worms or be lost out of neglect." But the murderer suggests how to counter that despair: "The beauty and mystery of this world only emerge through affection, attention, interest and compassion; if you want to live in that paradise where happy mares and stallions live, open your eyes wide and actually see this world by attending to its colors, details and irony." This is the heart of Pamuk's novel, throughout which he writes what may be "seen" when you attend to the world. Thus he vividly describes the streets, buildings, denizens, and food of Istanbul, as when the murderer eats a "meat-filled cabbage dolma . . . covered . . . with yogurt and topped . . . off with handfuls of hot red pepper flakes," or as when Black first returns to Istanbul:
"An approaching ship, whose sails were being lowered, greeted me with a flutter of canvas. The color of its sails matched the leaden and foggy hue of the surface of the Golden Horn. The cypress and plane trees, the rooftops, the heartache of dusk, the sounds coming from the neighborhood below, the calls of hawkers and the cries of children playing in mosque courtyards mingled in my head and announced emphatically that, hereafter, I wouldn't be able to live anywhere but in their city. I had the sensation that my beloved's face, which had escaped me for years, might suddenly appear to me."
The novel has numerous magical moments, like when we read of deaf musicians playing lutes and mute storytellers reciting stories to accompany a master artist's simulation of blindness while painting a picture, or the murderer following Black "through the turning and twisting streets of Istanbul" and past its jinns, angels, ghosts, brigands, and dogs, or Master Osman looking at a legendary illustrated Persian book "like roaming through an exquisite palace while its inhabitants slept."
John Lee is an excellent audiobook reader, and is mostly fine here, but although his ironic manner is perfect for Satan, a murderer, a feisty dog, and proud master miniaturists, etc., it is not so well suited to earnest characters like Black and Shekure, and his distinctive rhythm started making the different narrators sound the same.
Sometimes I lost focus reading the novel, because it is talky and reiterates some ideas. And although the murderer challenges us to discover his identity by carefully reading his chapters for clues, it was impossible (for this reader anyway) to discover his identity until the climax when we learn it no thanks to careful reading.
All that said, I was caught by Esther, Shekure, Black, and the murderer; by the exotic place, culture, and time; by the details on Ottoman miniaturist illustration; and by the ideas on art, love, story, memory, and perception. Anyone interested in Istanbul, art, and love depicted in rich language should like My Name Is Red.
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- Judy
- 06-03-17
Orhan's Bodice Ripper in the Guise of Art History
Would you consider the audio edition of My Name Is Red to be better than the print version?
Books with foreign names and places are always enhanced by a good narrator for me.
How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?
To change a single thing that Orhan Pamuk writes would be a sacrilege. And this story would be rated higher if some of his other books hadn't been so much more satisfying. He sets the bar pretty high for story telling.
Which scene was your favorite?
Favorite? Or most memorable? What woman could not be startled and even titillated to hear a man describe the inner sexual thoughts of a woman. How could he describe the pleasure of arousal and the chilling effect of a clumsy suggestion? Mr. Pamuk is a writers' writer and a readers pleasure.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
No. It's not written to pander to emotion.
Any additional comments?
This book, like all of his books, make the reader feel that Istanbul is part of her very own life experience. His characters may be flawed, or even despicable, but you understand them and manage to care about them in spite of, or because of, those defects of character.
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