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MY NAME IS RED - وردة_الهاني - 08-28-2008
MY NAME IS RED
By Orhan Pamuk
Orhan is a Turkish novelist for those who may not know him, winner of the Nobel Prize
in literature 2006 with a record of 6 novels only.
I heard about him by chance, someone mentioned his name in some internet article.
The name remained in my head, and when I went to the bookstore and bought 3 of his
novels.
I can’t speak Turkish so it was natural that I would get a translation of his works, I got 2
in English and one in Arabic.
I got MY NAME IS RED and THE NEW LIFE in English and the BLACK BOOK in Arabic.
My advice is that you read the English translation it sounded better, I enjoyed it more.
Now to my review on the novel:
MY NAME IS RED takes you back to Istanbul in the late 1590s, the characters of novel
are the Ottman Court Painters, Black, Black’s beloved cousin Shekure and her father
Enishte Effendi.
The father who is referred to in the novel as Enishte Effendi, is a courtier in the court
of the Ottman Sultan Murat III. The story starts with the return of Black from his
travels to his beloved city Istanbul after 12 years of departure. The reason of his
departure is that he’d been denied the hand of his fair cousin Shekure, so being heart
wounded he takes a clerk job and roams the Islamic World somehow trying to forget
the lost love of his life. At the same time the Sultan commissions a book called “The
Book of Festivities” as a celebration of the thousandth anniversary of our Prophet
Mohammed Hegira. The plot starts with the commission of the book, somehow Enishte
Effendi is fascinated with the art of Renaissance Italy after paying a visit to Venice he
thinks that Islamic Miniaturist should start painting in a realistic fashion and imitate the
Frankish masters, this request causes uproar amongst the royal atelier painters. A
murder occurs, one of the four Illuminating Masters is dead and the murderer must be
one of the few who knows about the book. Somehow black is involved and his Enishte
trusts him to go on with the book no matter what happens whilst something happens to
him, the murderer takes Enishte’s life as well. What I liked most in the writers style is
that each character speaks for itself, they talk to you(the reader) each in it’s turn and
this is how you understand the whole story.
I don’t want to ruin the thrill of reading it, about myself I enjoyed it as if it was poetry, it
might be because it involved painters and there was a good deal of information about
Miniature Art, which lead me to the appreciation of this long last art. Master Illuminator
Behzad’s story is mentioned in the novel, from what I understood it seems that Orhan
is fascinated by his art.