Orhan Pamuk’s My Name Is Red is one of the more complicated books I’ve ever read. It contains fifty-nine chapters, focusing mainly on twelve narrative voices (as if one wasn’t enough) and concentration is essential. However, don’t let that put you off. Once you’ve got your head around the first chapter you’ll want to know what happens on the last page.

The novel is set in Istanbul in the late 1590s, and combines love, mystery, death and the fears and impacts of religious control. Danger ensues when the Sultan commissions a great book to commemorate himself and his empire, wishing it to be illuminated in the European style. But the offensive nature of figurative art to the Islamic faith causes chaos to descend one of the chosen miniaturists is murdered. The tale evolves into a murder mystery as the answers to the crime lie within the half-finished illuminations themselves. Adding to the intriguing complications within the novel is the voice of the dead miniaturist who opens the novel.

So many questions are raised in My Name Is Red; each chapter altering what you thought before. Pamuk’s incredible skill as a writer makes it possible for all of these interweaving narratives, questions, conflicts and resolutions to coexist. It is unlike any book you will have read – Pamuk thoroughly deserving the Nobel Prize he was awarded. The magnitude of its formation is definitely worth the challenge of daunting complexity.

 

My name Is Red is available now from Faber.

Words: Hannah Shearer