Daily Times

My Name Is Red is a Turkish novel published in 1998 by Nobel Laureate author Orhan Pamuk. Its English translation established Pamuk’s international reputation and contributed to his winning of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. The novel blends mystery, romance, and philosophical puzzles, illustrating the reign of Ottoman Sultan Murat III during nine snowy winter days in the year 1591. The writer is creating literary history with no contemporary even close to him for at times the written words seem to stem from some divine power.

The fictionalised account of the history of miniature painting in this novel focuses on an aspect of the art world that is small, rich and almost impossible to see without looking closely. “Painting is the silence of thought and the music of sight”; it effectively conveys some of the central philosophical and practical concerns that characterise this particular artistic movement, which is infused with historical context, culture and the place it represented. It is a fantasy and a philosophical thriller/puzzle, a kaleidoscopic journey to the intersection of art, religion, love, sex, and power. But what is most conspicuous is the extent to which it glorifies art of Islamic illustrations with descriptions of paintings; some of which verge on prose poems. It is full of stories about the great miniaturists, their history, style, relationship of art to morality, society, religion and the effects of western ideas.

Each chapter has a different narrator in addition to the unexpected voices used such as the corpse of the murdered, a coin, Satan, two dervishes, dog, horse, tree and the colour red; detailing the philosophical system of religious repression in 16th-century Istanbul. The chapters have headings that tell the readers who will be speaking like “I Am a Corpse”, “I Am Esther”, “It Is I, Master Osman” and so on. What is simply remarkable literary creativity is that some of the narrators are not living people but non-human characters.

The story revolves around a Sultan in the Ottoman Empire who commissions a book to celebrate his royal self and his extensive dominion by directing master of the miniaturists, Enishte Effendi, to assemble a cadre of the most acclaimed artists in the land. Their task is to illuminate the work in European style. Effendi coordinates with miniaturists nicknamed Elegant, Stork, Olive, and Butterfly. As the figurative art can be deemed an affront to Islam, this commission is a dangerous proposition with no one in the elite circle knowing the full scope or nature of the project. But when one of the miniaturists, Elegant Effendi, disappears, the answer to his whereabouts seems to lie in the images themselves. Part of the novel is narrated by Elegant Effendi, the murdered miniaturist who had been murdered and thrown down a well for he has accused his murderer of producing sacrilegious illustrations.

The Sultan demands answers within three days. The only clue to the mystery lies in the half-finished illuminations themselves. The story is mainly concerned with finding the culprit and in ascertaining the motive for the murder. Later when the murderer picks another victim, Enishte, the master of the miniaturists, the readers hear firsthand from the victim about being killed and describing how his funeral was splendid, exactly the way he had wanted it to be, while spotting among his mourners, his murderer. The murderer and his victims speak; the former without revealing his identity and the latter as spirits. As the story progresses, the dead painters speak obsessively of the perfectionist art to which they dedicated themselves in life while the events surrounding their lives appear like parts of a painting.

Black, an illustrator and Enishte’s nephew, is asked to investigate. He spends three nights in the Sultan’s treasury with Master Osman, head illuminator of the Sultan’s workshop, who blinds himself rather than yield to the new western ways. Readers enter a world where Renaissance perspectivism, a dominance of vision, confronts the ultimate vision of blindness, presented in the novel as the self-imposed fate of the miniaturists at the peak of their careers. “We mistakenly assume that these stories arose out of words and that illustrations were painted in service of these stories.” They embark upon a quest, searching for the collected books for stylistic clues that will identify the murderer.

To complicate things further, Black has an old passion for Enishte’s daughter Shekure, who is married to a husband missing in battle and is also being pursued by her brother-in-law. She is flirting with both through a Jewess who carries her messages through the streets of Istanbul. Shekure, who is indecisive and an over-thinker, wants a man in her life again. The love angle and a second murder steps up the intrigue. Apart from the love affair, another gripping angle of the book lies in its solving of the murder. The novel is multi-dimensional for it integrates a murder mystery, which is in itself thrilling and loaded with suspense and is masterful and subtle as an allegory on the clash of cultures.

Orhan Pamuk is a progressive Muslim intellectual who opposes the conflict between the east and the west and holds the belief that all good art and creativity comes from mixing things from different roots, cultures and most importantly religion. “Every cleric with any ambition who’s met with some favour and whose head has swollen as a result will preach that religion is being ignored and disrespected. This is the most reliable way to ensure one’s living.” This fusion of religions and cultures does not generate conflicts but rather is an amalgamation in which the values of each one are preserved and respected.

The reviewer is a social activist. He can be reached at drirfanzafar@gmail.com