My Name Is Red

I've been working on My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk for about a week now in my continuing effort to learn more about the Ottoman Empire and Turkey in general.  Pamuk, a Nobel Prize winner, was recommended by one of the leaders of our trip, and My Name is Red in particular was specified as a good starting place for his work.  I got it on Kindle and headed into it.

I wasn't prepared for the journey that awaited me.  For general information, you can click through to the Wikipedia page. The novel deals with a community of artists in 16th century Istanbul, the miniaturists.  Each chapter is told by a different voice, but the main characters repeat throughout.  This reminded me a lot of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying.  (I know.  I see links where there probably are none, the the similarities are remarkable.)  The chapters are short and intricate, like the very miniatures the characters are commissioned with creating.  At first, I had no idea what was going on and who was involved.  It starts very much in medias res, and the first voice you hear is actually the voice of a dead man.  Once I got used to the flow of the novel and started to figure out who was linked to whom, it was charming.

The work has so much to enjoy.  First of all, there is all the historical research that must have been involved.  The time period is described so clearly.  That, however, pales when compared to the technical aspect of its creation. I cannot imagine the difficulty of maintaining no fewer than twelve narrative voices, one of which is actually the "split personality" of another.  Each character has a distinct and realistic voice and view on the world. It's an amazing accomplishment to see the world through so many eyes.

Woven into the plot of murder and intrigue is a healthy dose of folklore, custom, and even costuming.  It was a perfect choice for me to read just now because it perfectly accompanied the course text and readings we had.  So many of the things the text described were humanized and made accessible through the story.  Stories about famous characters from folk tales, poetry, songs, patterns of behavior, even architecture is presented in such glorious detail.  Every chapter really was a little picture.

I have another book by Pamuk, his Istanbul, which is quite different, a set of memoirs of the city he grew up in and still lives in today.  I have a few other things I want to read first, but it's in my near future.  It will be interesting to see how he continues to reveal this place I am becoming increasingly more and more fascinated with.