subject: My Name Is Red [print this page] From one of the most important and acclaimed writers at work today, a thrilling novelpart murder mystery, part love storyset amid the perils of religious repression in sixteenth-century Istanbul.When the Sultan commissions a great book to celebrate his royal self and his extensive dominion, he directs Enishte Effendi to assemble a cadre of the most acclaimed artists.
The novel takes place at the cusp of miniature painting's demise. The influence of Infidel art,Tiffany Jewelry the Renaissance, is already being felt, especially the portraiture of Frankish artists.The very idea of distinguishing the sitter--and even making portraits of women!--within a landscape that diminishes is an affront to Islam. "To God belongs the East and the West," the book quotes the Koran, and this suggests its polemic: With the Renaissance the historical tide turns finally and forever away from the arts of the East. A cultural clash that apparently echoes today.
It's also not easy to read while you are sick - and I keep falling asleep - thanks to paracetamol. But when I shouldn't do anything else - I'd rather read.
But I feel my name is red is a great way to start the new year.Yes, pamuk was a different cup of tea - far different than any I had experienced before. I can see why he took the world by storm. The way he renders the story, through chapters that carry on the story in a linear timeline, adding the catch that each chapter is written in the voice of a different person - voices of the main characters of the story. There were even inanimate objects and animals who were taking part in the narration. Interesting, very much the kind of book I would like to have on my bookshelf and then be known as an intellectual. Love and death and the divine are recurring in the book - and it's a captivating combination one has to admit.
This novel is then formally brilliant, witty and about serious matters.Tiffany Jewelry sale But even this inclusive description does not really capture what I feel is the book's true greatness, which lies in its managing to do with apparent ease what novelists have always striven for but very few achieve. 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.
He has taken his inspiration from western modernist literature, but instead of destroying his 16th-century artists, he illuminates their world as no one has before.More than any other book I can think of, it captures not just its past and present contradictions, but also its terrible, timeless beauty. It's almost perfect, in other words.
But intelligence is not why I liked he book, not even because it was a murder mystery, and not because it was poetic. It was all that, sure, but that was not it.The part which really hooked me in and kept me hanging on to the words was the richness of stories that were being told via the narrative. How there would narrations of the masters of Herat, of the Khans of someplace, of Shah Tamasp, of the Tabriz school of miniaturists, and of course, of Nizami, and of Rumi, and of Firdausi, and of course, of Shirin, Khusrao, Mejnun, Farhad and Layla - it was just amazing, nothing short of it. I vaguely remember when borges was asked what made fantastic fiction fantastic, he gave three criteria, and one of them was 'the work within the work'.
These are things that have been falling on my ear for quite some time now, and have been piquing my curiosity unlike anything ever before.Pamuk has made me decide that I have to read them - no excuses. The only hurdles in my way are my inadequate MAC Cosmetics hold of farsi, urdu, the hindi script, and the half-read copy of ulyssesBut I will get there - soon.Meanwhile, I thank pamuk for showing how these stories of ancient lovers can still be read and re-felt in our hearts.
