Orhan Pamuk · 1998
My Name is Red
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“First of all, I am a corpse, a body at the bottom of a well.”
Begin ReadingMy Name is Redis a murder mystery set in Istanbul in the winter of 1591. But it is a detective story unlike any other — it is narrated by the dead, the living, the color red, a gold coin, a dog, a horse, and a tree. Each voice reveals a piece of a puzzle that reaches into the heart of Ottoman art, Islamic tradition, and the great collision between East and West. Orhan Pamuk's masterpiece is a novel about miniature painting, love, jealousy, and murder — and about whether an artist has the right to paint the world as he sees it.
“Painting is the silence of thought and the music of sight.”
— Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red
Published in 1998, My Name is Redwon the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger, and established Pamuk as one of the world's great novelists. It was a key work cited in his 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature. This site is your guide to its world — from the miniaturists' workshop to the streets of Ottoman Istanbul, from the politics of painting to the mystery at the bottom of a well.