Reading & Writing Lounge

My Name is Red: Orhan Pamuk
Reading My Name is Red is akin to meditation. Orhan Pamuk’s brilliant reflective novel brings to mind Eco’s The Name of the Rose. Pamuk weaves a rich tapestry of intrigue, human drama and emotion, religion, romance, sex, and the miniaturist’s world and philosophy. The book is choc-a-bloc with reflections on art, its meaning and purpose, and the artist’s view of the world vis-à-vis that of the omniscient. The dense chapters require complete attention to detail, with the kind of abandonment that the average reader has little time for today.

The reader gets caught between reality and fantasy and Orhan Pamuk twirls the strands with a deft, artistic hand. My Name is Red is a murder mystery; it is also a treatise on the nature of love per se—love as spiritual and sexual gratification, love as art, and love as sin. Through these paradigms, we get a glimpse into the contemporary cultural and religious philosophy, religious and artistic repression and the conflict between man’s subordination to God and the newer perspective of placing him at the center of the universe. Blasphemy has different connotations in this stirring story plotted like an exquisite architectural piece.
The novel speaks in many voices, including those of a dog, a tree, a corpse, the color Red, and the miniaturists and murder suspects Olive, Stork, and Butterfly. By the end, the last three seem to blend into one another such that it is neither possible to differentiate among them, nor important to do so. That the murders have taken place and the motive has been described in painful detail is the only fact, and the density of information does not arouse the reader’s curiosity.

The Sultan has commissioned Enishte Effendi to create an illustrated book celebrating his rule and power. The style is not conventional, using the perspective technique blasphemous to fanatics of the faith. And so starts a sequel of murder and death, annihilation and conspiracy, fear and uncertainty. The murderer’s identity can be ascertained only through the illustrations and a rigorous discourse on what comprises true art. This is where the book turns into a meditation. The many voices used comprise stories within stories and each works as a window frame, leading the reader a little more into the heart of the events and the narrative.

Pamuk is brilliant; so is My Name is Red. But read it when you have ample time and leisure, for this is one book that cannot be read in starts while waiting for the bus.

Related on this blog:

• Chronicle of a Past Forgotten-Amitav Ghosh's The Glass Palace
• Andromache—Unrequited Passion
• The Assassin’s Song by M.G. Vassanji