"It is neither passion nor homicide that makes Pamuk''s latest,
My Name is Red, the rich and essential book that it is. .
. . It is Pamuk''s rendering of the intense life of artists
negotiating the devilishly sharp edge of Islam 1,000 years after
its brith that elevates My Name is Red to the rank of
modern classic. . . . To read Pamuk is to be steeped in a paradox
that precedes our modern-day feuds beteween secularism and
fundamentalism."
--Jonathan Levi, Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Straddling the Dardanelles sits the city of Istanbul . . . and in
that city sits Orhan Pamuk, chronicler of its consciousness . . .
His novel''s subject is the difference in perceptions between East
and West . . . [and] a mysterious killer... driven by mad theology.
. .Pamuk is getting at a subject that has compelled modern thinkers
from Heidegger to Derrida . . . My Name is Red is a
meditation on authenticity and originality . . . An ambitious work
on so many levels at once."
--Melvin Jules Bukiet, Chicago Tribune
"Most enchanting . . . Playful, intellectually challenging, with an
engaging love story and a full canvas of memorable characters,
My Name is Red is a novel many, many people will
enjoy."
--David Walton, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"Intensely exhilarating . . . Arresting and provocative . . . To
say that Orhan Pamuk''s new novel, My Name is Red, is a
murder mystery is like saying that Dostoevsky''s The Brothers
Karamazov is a murder mystery: it is true, but the work so
richly transcends the conventional limitations of genre as to make
the definition seem almost irrelevant. . . . The
techniques of classical Islamic literature are used to anchor the
book within a tradition of local narrative, but they can also be
used with a wonderfully witty and distancing lightness of touch . .
. All the exuberance and richly descriptive detail of a
nineteenth-century European novel . . . The technique of Pamuk''s
novel proclaims that he himself is a magnificently accomplished
hybrid artist, able to take from Eastern and Western traditions
with equal ease and flair . . . Formally brilliant, witty, and
about serious matters . . . It conveys in a wholly convincing
manner the emotional, cerebral, and physical texture of daily life,
and it does so with great compassion, generosity, and humanity . .
. An extraordinary achievement."
--Dick Davis, Times Literary Supplement, UK
"My Name is Red is a fabulously rich
novel, highly compelling . . . This pivotal
book, which absorbed Pamuk through the 1990s, could conclusively
establish him as one of the world''s finest living writers."
--Guy Mannes-Abbott, The Independent, UK
"A murder mystery set in sixteenth-century Istanbul [that] uses the
art of miniature illumination, much as Mann''s ''Doctor
Faustus'' did music, to explore a nation''s soul. . . . Erdag
Goknar deserves praise for the cool, smooth English in which he has
rendered Pamuk''s finespun sentences, passionate art appreciations,
sly pedantic debates, [and] eerie urban scenes."
--John Updike, The New Yorker
"Pamuk is a novelist and a great one...My Name is Red is
by far the grandest and most astonishing contest in his internal
East-West war...It is chock-full of sublimity and sin...The story
is told by each of a dozen characters, and now and then by a dog, a
tree, a gold coin, several querulous corpses and the color crimson
(''My Name is Red'')...[Readers will] be lofted by the paradoxical
lightness and gaiety of the writing, by the wonderfully winding
talk perpetually about to turn a corner, and by the stubborn
humanity in the characters'' maneuvers to survive. It is a humanity
whose lies and silences emerge as endearing and oddly bracing
individual truths."
--Richard Eder, New York Times Book Review
"The interweaving of human and philosophical intrigue is very much
as I remember it in The Name of the Rose, as is the slow,
dense beginning and the relentless gathering of pace . . . But, in
my view, his book is by far the better of the two. I would go so
far as to say that Pamuk achieves the very thing his book implies
is impossible . . . More than any other book I can think of, it
captures not just Istanbul''s past and present contradictions, but
also its terrible, timeless beauty. It''s almost perfect, in other
words. All it needs is the Nobel Prize."
--Maureen Freely, New Statesman, UK
"A perfect example of Pamuk''s method as a novelist, which is
to combine literary trickery with page-turning readability . . . As
a meditation on art, in particular, My Name is Red is
exquisitely subtle, demanding and repaying the closest attention .
. We in the West can only feel grateful that such a novelist as
Pamuk exists, to act as a bridge between our culture and that of a
heritage quite as rich as our own."
--Tom Holland, Daily Telegraph, UK
"Readers . . . will find themselves lured into a richly described
and remarkable world . . . Reading the novel is like being in a
magically exotic dream . . .Splendidly enjoyable and rewarding . .
. A book in which you can thoroughly immerse yourself."
--Allan Massie, The Scotsman, UK
"A wonderful novel, dreamy, passionate and august, exotic in the
most original and exciting way. Orhan Pamuk is indisputably a major
novelist."
--Philip Hensher, The Spectator, UK
"[In this] magnificent new novel... Pamuk takes the reader into the
strange and beautiful world of Islamic art,in which Western notions
no longer make sense .... In this world of forgeries, where some
might be in danger of losing their faith in literature, Pamuk is
the real thing, and this book might well be one of the few recent
works of fiction that will be remembered at the end of this
century."
--Avkar Altinel, The Observer, UK
From the Hardcover edition.