My Name Is Red

By: Orhan Pamuk, Erdag Goknar - translator

Narrated by: John Lee

Length: 20 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

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 16th-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 Erdag Goknar.

©2008 Orhan Pamuk (P)2008 Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

"It is neither passion nor homicide that makes Pamuk's latest, My Name is Red, the rich and essential book that it is. . . . It is Pamuk's rendering of the intense life of artists negotiating the devilishly sharp edge of Islam 1,000 years after its brith that elevates My Name is Red to the rank of modern classic. . . . To read Pamuk is to be steeped in a paradox that precedes our modern-day feuds beteween secularism and fundamentalism." (Jonathan Levi, Los Angeles Times Book Review)

"Straddling the Dardanelles sits the city of Istanbul . . . and in that city sits Orhan Pamuk, chronicler of its consciousness . . . His novel's subject is the difference in perceptions between East and West . . . [and] a mysterious killer... driven by mad theology. . .Pamuk is getting at a subject that has compelled modern thinkers from Heidegger to Derrida . . . My Name is Red is a meditation on authenticity and originality . . . An ambitious work on so many levels at once." (Melvin Jules Bukiet, Chicago Tribune)

"A murder mystery set in sixteenth-century Istanbul [that] uses the art of miniature illumination, much as Mann's Doctor Faustus did music, to explore a nation's soul. . . . Erdag Goknar deserves praise for the cool, smooth English in which he has rendered Pamuk's finespun sentences, passionate art appreciations, sly pedantic debates, [and] eerie urban scenes." (John Updike, The New Yorker)

Academic commitment

This book requires dedication & is not a good choice for an easy, lighthearted distraction. If you’re into historical fiction and unpacking complex themes and storylines, then this book may be for you. After the first 5 hours, I had to start over & supplement with Cliff notes but once I was oriented I found the story, setting, and writing style very compelling and didn’t want to put it down. It’s the type of book you could listen to over and over and learn as well as feel something new each time.

Must Read

Highly recommended story with unique perspective. Throughly enjoyed this intriguing murder mystery set in medieval Istanbul

COMPLEX

This book is quite complex, due to the many characters, each of which tell their own story.
The stories are expertly narrated by John Lee. I cannot think of an other narrator who could have done better.
If you are new to Mr. Orhan Pamuk, I don’t recommend starting with this book. The one I recommend is
“The strangeness in my mind”.
Interesting to learn about the art of miniature paintings. When Googling the internet, you can find pictures of many miniatures.
In Wikipedia you can also find a complete list and descriptions of the many characters.
All in all I highly recommend listening.
My thanks to all involved, JK.

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.

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.

"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.

The best english written prose ever read

The quality of writing in english is matchless and unlike any other written piece that I have read before. The concept where different things think and speak is quite unique as well. Plus the theme of the book and story line is excellent as well. Must read.

totally needless indulgence

it is utterly not clear why the author needed to spin the largely pointless take that comprises this book. he could have made the points that he had wanted to make much faster, more directly, and without taking up 20 hours of listening time. terrible book.

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.

Just not interesting

Well, there was no there there. The plot was simple, the characters not endearing or interesting, and the dialog, good grief, it was so unbelievable and un-relatable that it was difficult to listen to. Just really poor dialog. I don’t get it.