My Name Is Red

Name: My Name Is Red
Author: Orhan Pamuk

Orhan Pamuk

— 1998 —

“

The murder of a miniaturist in 16th century Ottoman Istanbul, narrated by multiple voices including the victim and the color red itself.

The record

Time
An eveningA season
448 pages, about 9 hours: the length of 1.4 typical books on the shelf.
Getting in
Walk right inSteep climb
One reader reports nearly quitting before page 100; the opening narrates the miniaturist Elegant Effendi’s murder through his own corpse’s voice.
What it gives
Plot and actionIdeas to live by
In 15 reviews from critics and book blogs, 5 credit the plot and 14 credit the ideas or a change in how they live.
One of a kind
Others do thisNothing else does
Two reviewers compare it to Eco’s The Name of the Rose, on the shelf at 518 pages.

on the translation
“the cool, smooth English in which he has rendered Pamuk’s finespun sentences”
John Updike · The New Yorker, 2001
on the city of Istanbul
“Pamuk’s Istanbul is a city trembling over a fault line of ideas.”
Jonathan Levi · Los Angeles Times, 2001
on the art of painting
“a poem in prose, a chant to the art of painting”
a book blog
on the gold coin
“A favorite section is narrated by a gold coin”
a book blog

on the detail
“explore the aesthetics of representation in great and sometimes exhausting detail.”
Sarah Coleman · San Francisco Chronicle, 2001
on the suspects
“various suspects are insufficiently differentiated from each other”
Tom Holland · Daily Telegraph, 2001
on the length
“I think it could have benefited from being shorter”
a book blog
on the narration
“Most of the book is either description or introspection from the narrator to the reader”
four stars · a book blog