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My Name Is Red cover art

My Name Is Red

Written by: Orhan Pamuk, Erdag Goknar - translator
Narrated by: John Lee
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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.
Historical Thriller & Suspense Classics Literary Fiction
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What the critics say

"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)

What listeners say about My Name Is Red

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An Eastern Reader living in the West

First thing first, I never really knew what an incredible journey is to draw a miniature painting. Being in love with Renaissance art in Flirence, Venice and Rome, I had no idea the world of miniature painting could be as complex and lovely.

Apart from this general comment, I found the plot quite interesting however, a bit too long at some parts.

Some characters left alone and never came back such as the dog.

The beginning and end were nicely done.

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Profile Image for Diana M

Zzzzzzzzzzz

I liked it at first; I enjoyed the different perspectives of each chapter, and I really loved the narrator's subtleties, distinguishing between each voice. However! I found it extremely difficult to keep my mind from wandering while listening. This puzzled me, until I realized how frequently the author resorts to using incredibly long, repetitive descriptions of things. As one example, at one point a character suggests to another that a book will make a man immortal. The other man replies at enormous length with all the different ways a book might be destroyed. I mean, it goes on and on and on. And on. I only made it through about half this book and just gave up.

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