My Name Is Red

Name: My Name Is Red
Rating: 3.88 (64618 reviews)

by Orhan Pamuk

First published 1998

Amazon

3.9(64,618)

Istanbul, 1591. The sultan has secretly commissioned a lavish illustrated book that adopts elements of European portraiture, alarming artists who believe such representation violates the principles of Islamic miniature painting. When one of the workshop’s illuminators is murdered, the missing page and the stylistic traces left in the surviving images become evidence in a crime concealed behind artistic rivalry.

Black returns to Istanbul after twelve years and is drawn into the investigation by his uncle, who directs the secret book. He also hopes to marry the uncle’s daughter Şeküre, whose soldier husband has not returned from war. Human, dead and inanimate narrators compete to explain the killings, while the miniaturists’ fear of individual style turns the mystery into a conflict over faith, artistic identity, love and imperial power.