Everyman's Library, 2010
What does one say about a novel that was published a dozen years ago, a novel that was burned in public because its author was accused of "insulting Turkishness" in 2005, a novel that was a major factor in why its author won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006? The answer lies in the introduction as we shall see.
My Name is Red was originally published in Turkish in 1998. The first English translation came in 2001 and won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2003. Other well-deserved awards and critical acclaim followed. Perhaps those book burnings brought it to the attention of a wider range of critics and readers. Now, My Name is Red has been republished as part of the Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics series.
This edition is expanded by an excellent introduction in which Pamuk explains how he came to write this novel, its literary influences, the autobiographical elements, and why it is told with many voices and different perspectives. From age seven until twenty-two, Pamuk tells us, he spent "a lot of time" dreaming of becoming a painter. At the latter age, he began writing somewhat as an extension of the form of painting. His earliest writing, as one might imagine, owed a great debt to his knowledge of painting and its history. By age forty-two, he began to think in terms of the novel that would become My Name is Red.
What does one say about a novel that was published a dozen years ago, a novel that was burned in public because its author was accused of "insulting Turkishness" in 2005, a novel that was a major factor in why its author won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006? The answer lies in the introduction as we shall see.
My Name is Red was originally published in Turkish in 1998. The first English translation came in 2001 and won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2003. Other well-deserved awards and critical acclaim followed. Perhaps those book burnings brought it to the attention of a wider range of critics and readers. Now, My Name is Red has been republished as part of the Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics series.
This edition is expanded by an excellent introduction in which Pamuk explains how he came to write this novel, its literary influences, the autobiographical elements, and why it is told with many voices and different perspectives. From age seven until twenty-two, Pamuk tells us, he spent "a lot of time" dreaming of becoming a painter. At the latter age, he began writing somewhat as an extension of the form of painting. His earliest writing, as one might imagine, owed a great debt to his knowledge of painting and its history. By age forty-two, he began to think in terms of the novel that would become My Name is Red.
With extensive research into the history of painting, he conceived his novel as "laying objects and people, like bricks, one atop the other, the scheme like that of a master architect designing a huge dome." Everything had to be precisely right; the introduction even includes a schematic of the house. He consulted this several times daily during the four years in which he wrote the novel to ensure that he had the traffic flow within the house correct. This also gave him the opportunity to fully understand and invest himself in his characters. Pamuk writes that he began this book just after he had quit smoking and wrote it "by hand, with a fountain pen, in Istanbul, without smoking a single cigarette."
Pamuk has also included an extensive chronology of his life and a corresponding literary context. At the end of the novel is a much expanded historical chronology juxtaposing art history, literature, and historical events. This begins in 336 BC and concludes in 1627.
Pamuk has also included an extensive chronology of his life and a corresponding literary context. At the end of the novel is a much expanded historical chronology juxtaposing art history, literature, and historical events. This begins in 336 BC and concludes in 1627.
The novel is told from multiple viewpoints (think Faulkner's As I Lay Dying), each chapter being told by a different narrator. And I do mean different. The seven human narrators include a corpse; other narrators are a dog, a miniature representation of a horse, Death, the color red, and a gold coin which has "changed hands 560 times." Chapter One begins ominously, "I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well." This corpse was a painter of miniatures in the Sultan's workshop, a place of intense intrigue in the Ottoman Empire of the 16th Century, and more particularly in the workshops of those who made miniature paintings for the sultan. The predominant theme is a clash of cultures, the rift between religious tradition and an emerging self identity which puts man at the center of the universe. It is a rift that is likely to never be filled in.
My Name is Red is not an easy book to read. The multiple characters and viewpoints do make for some confusion, but the journey is certainly worth the effort.
My Name is Red is not an easy book to read. The multiple characters and viewpoints do make for some confusion, but the journey is certainly worth the effort.
Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.
