My Name Is Red

My Name Is Red
Orhan Pamuk, trans. Erdağ Göknar
Vintage International, 2002
432 pages
ISBN 978-0375706851
Recommended by: ongoing Orhan Pamuk project... the Nobel Prize committee?


This book is completely badass. Wikipedia page/limited reviews I have read/back cover copy are always comparing Pamuk to Borges, Calvino, Nabokov, Thomas Mann, but I am a little surprised that nowhere in these reviews has what I consider the obvious comparison come up: friggin Umberto Eco, am I right? The Name Of The Rose? They are not that similar stylistically; Pamuk doesn't digress to nearly the same extent as Eco in Rose, but both novels are murder mysteries centered around, narratively, the murders of men involved in the creation of illuminated manuscripts, and thematically, among other things, the questionable moral value of the creation of beautiful religious artifacts.

My Name Is Red, like Snow, once again tackles the tension between East and West that I suspect is a running theme in Pamuk's work (alongside other running themes that I suspect, like the way he subtly or just-barely slips himself into the text); this time in the context of sixteenth-century representative art. Have I ever mentioned how much I love illuminated manuscripts and lengthy philosophical discussions about the theological merit of art? Because it's a lot. Pamuk appears to a be a good writer to have addressed my "try-reading-more-than-one-book-by-a-given-author" project, because it seems-- having read only two of his novels at this point-- that he really is someone who is constantly addressing, battling even, the same themes; it seems as though they crop up not even on purpose, they are just always the things running through his mind. Religion and politics, art and morality, east and west, tradition and freedom, the role of the author in creating a text, the role of the reader.

Also, since every chapter is told in the first person by a different person, this is far and away the book in which I have appreciated running heads the most.

I would have started The Museum of Innocence today on my giant debacle of a bus ride, but someone has loaned me Istanbul, Pamuk's memoir/reflection on the eponymous city, and so I thought I would try to read that before taking off to said city, as I wouldn't want to accidentally wreck or lose someone else's book.

Also here, a lovely review of the novel in question.