My Name Is Red

Benim Adım Kırmızı · published 1998 · ISBN 9780375706851

Orhan Pamuk — Orhan Pamuk (b. 1952) — Turkey, writing in Turkish. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006.

“who in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures.” — The Nobel Committee citation

About Orhan Pamuk

A Turkish novelist and a major literary voice bound up with Istanbul. His work often explores the tension between Eastern tradition and Western modernity, between memory and upheaval.

How it came to be

Published in 1998, the novel is set in the miniaturists' workshop of the Ottoman court, at the moment when Western painting began to unsettle classical Islamic conventions. Its many-voiced structure and East-West themes established Pamuk as Turkey's foremost literary voice.

What My Name Is Red is about

In late-sixteenth-century Istanbul, a court miniaturist is murdered, opening a case narrated through many voices — including those of a corpse, a coin and the color red. Beneath the mystery lie a love story and the East-West conflict stirred by the arrival of Western perspective painting.

Analysis & legacy

My Name Is Red is at once a murder mystery, a love story and a meditation on art and faith. Set in the miniaturists' workshop of the late-sixteenth-century Ottoman court — just as Western perspective painting begins to unsettle Islamic artistic tradition — the novel is narrated by a chorus of voices, among them a corpse, a coin and the color red itself, to stage an East-West collision around a single question: is painting a way of seeing the world through God's eyes, or through the self of the artist? Its polyphonic structure and intellectual depth established Pamuk as Turkey's leading literary voice, won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Award and helped earn him the 2006 Nobel.

Themes: East & West · Art & faith · Identity · Mystery · Istanbul

Rating: 3.3/5 from 9 ratings (Open Library).

What critics say

• The ideas in Red give fascination and energy, and work to hold together its turbulent narrative. — Richard Eder, The New York Times Book Review
• This novel is formally brilliant, witty and about serious matters with great compassion and humanity. — Dick Davis, Times Literary Supplement
• Winner of the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Award — one of the most valuable literary prizes in the world. — IMPAC Dublin 2003, International Dublin Literary Award

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