My Name Is Red

My Name Is Red (Benim Adım Kırmızı, in Turkish) is a 1998 novel by the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk. Set in the Ottoman Empire in 1591, during the reign of Sultan Murad III, it centres on a workshop of court miniaturists in Istanbul where a murder has just been committed. From that crime, a succession of narrators—up to twenty-one in all—recount the events surrounding the hunt for the killer, while the personal stories of the artists, their rivalries and their doubts about their craft gradually intertwine.

The novel was written at a time when Pamuk had already become one of the leading voices in Turkish literature, and it established his international reputation. The French translation won the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger, the Italian version the Premio Grinzane Cavour in 2002, and the English translation the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2003. It did much to build the recognition that led to Pamuk receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006.

In form, Pamuk draws on postmodern techniques, above all metafiction: the narrators address the reader, acknowledge that they are characters in a book, and suggest that someone may be scrutinising their words for clues. Among the voices are a corpse, a horse, a counterfeit coin and even the colour red itself, which gives the book a playful, choral quality.

Its central theme is the nature of painting. It sets the Western conception, which seeks to reproduce reality as the eye perceives it and treats art as an end in itself, against the Eastern one, more abstract and idealised, which aims to depict the world as God sees it. This tension is embodied in masters who, late in their careers, go blind and paint from memory.

The novel also weaves together a detective mystery, the love story between Black and Shekure—echoing the Persian poem Khosrow and Shirin—and a meditation on sexuality, contrasting the strictures of Islamic law with the passions of its characters. It further explores the ambiguous bonds, between camaraderie and desire, within the community of illuminators.

Critics praised Pamuk's prose and the book's ability to combine philosophical ideas with a gripping plot. For many readers and critics it is his finest work in English translation, and it has been published in more than sixty languages.