My Name Is Red

Orhan Pamuk is a well-known Turkish writer with many national and international awards, including the Nobel Prize in Literature for “the search for the soul of his melancholic city.” Indeed, the action in almost all of the writer’s novels takes place in Istanbul—a mysterious and beautiful city that has experienced a tremendous peak and the sad twilight of decline. And most importantly, it has become a kind of meeting place for the East and the West. It is precisely this encounter that forms the basis of Pamuk’s famous novel “My Name Is Red,” whose events unfold in sixteenth-century Istanbul. A passionate story of love, a detective mystery, numerous stories, legends, and tales from the ancient East skillfully woven into the plot, an immersion into the secrets of Persian miniature artistry, an elegant narration—all of this turns the work into a true masterpiece.