My Name is Red

by Orhan Pamuk, translated from the original Turkish by Erdag Goknar

Set in the decadent but culturally tumultuous period of 16th-century Istanbul, the Sultan has commissioned a clandestine illuminated book from one of the most acclaimed miniaturists of the period. The request to create a book in the European style, deemed heretical by non-figurative standards and traditions of Islamic miniatures, requires an extreme level of secrecy and risk on behalf of the artists. When one of the artists assigned to the task mysteriously goes missing, suspicions are raised between the cohort sworn to secrecy- there is a killer in their midst, and nobody knows who. Awarded the esteemed Nobel Prize in literature, My Name is Red is an elaborate tapestry of religion, sensuality, pride, art, secrecy, love, and jealousy.

"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 between secularism and fundamentalism."
–Los Angeles Times Book Review

Vintage Books, 1998, softcover, 417 pages.