Each individual voice, including that of the murderer, reveals and conceals information in profound and sometimes funny ways.
The human characters speak to the reader, but so do objects and images that come to life: a coin, the color red, and an illustration of a tree. This play of narrative adds to a rich range of voices that advance the story, the many first-person narrators in the book. Some of these stories frame actions in the book as they are related by characters, others offer echoes of actions in the book, underpinning events in a more playful way. The novel’s story unfolds amidst layers and webs of other stories―many drawn from the riches of Persian and other Middle Eastern literatures. A group of artists have been commissioned to create a secret book for the Sultan, which is remarkable because the work is to be in the Western, or Frankish, style rather than the traditional Islamic style that these miniaturists have trained for all their lives, training which aims to pass on both the craft of miniature painting and book creation, but also its ideals and philosophies. For a hundred years, military conquest and glorious achievement in art and architecture have distinguished Turkish rule, but change is in the air. Constantinople (known today as Istanbul) in the 1590s is the capital of the great Ottoman Empire. Orhan Pamuk’s masterpiece brings many threads together into a vast canvas: it is a love story wrapped inside a murder mystery, and a meditation on the joys and dangers of artistic creation in a time of cultural conflict and change. What does it mean to be true to tradition, or to change it? So what do you need to know about My Name Is Red before you read it?
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