My Name Is Red
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Written by Orhan Pamuk and Erdag Goknar.
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($15.95)
Editorial Review (from Amazon.com)
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
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Za thinks this book is Nothing Special.
This book took me about three weeks to a month to finish, which included a period of 10 days or so when I was out of town and didn't touch it. Though I was in the middle of the book at the time, I didn't miss it at all. That kind of says it all for me.
My Name is Red is based on a unique storyline, set in the late 1500s in Turkey. One of the Sultan's miniaturists has been murdered, and the art as it exists in the country is changing, unable to escape the influence of Venetian portraiture. That the book is well-researched is undeniable. I certainly learned something about the art and traditions of the time through it. However, unless you enjoy very, very slow reads, My Name is Red may not be worth spending a lot of your time over. About 500 pages long, it felt more like 1000 to me, because Pamuk allows the story to progress only at a halting pace, and by the end of it, I honestly didn't care who the murderer was or how the story was going to end. My main problem was with the characters -- they are incredibly flawed, to an extent that one feels virtually no compassion or sense of identity with any of them, and some amount of that is necessary if one is to feel truly involved or engaged in a story. It could also be the very setting -- both time and location -- that alienates them from the reader, but there's more to it than that -- I didn't like any of them.
One of the nice things about the book was the changing voice of the author in every chapter. Different protagonists tell their story in chapters like "I am Black" or "I am Shekure" and that definitely adds some interest to the tale. I could do with whatever of that I could find.
Although I am quite the fan of Pamuk's works -- I especially enjoyed Snow -- I have to say this book is the perfect example of hype being much more important in the success of a work than substance. Huge parts of it are simply boring -- no other word for it! It's a gainful read in that it isn't everyday fare and is certainly somewhat of a novelty in contemporary literature, with interesting historical information and a unique Eastern perspective, but it's just not the masterpiece it's been made out to be.