While I am a little fearful of doing injustice to writing as beautiful and imaginative as My Name is Red is by Orhan Pamuk, I have a painful pinched nerve in my neck and really shouldn’t be sitting in front of a computer at all, let alone spending forever trying to find the right words for this post. So first, please forgive me. Second, go read this book.

Although it’s billed as a murder-mystery and love story, what I loved was going back in time to 16th century Istanbul during the Ottoman Empire  and getting a taste of the culture, as well as the political alliances and rivalries of the time. Even better, the novel centers around a group of artists, known as miniaturists and illuminators. Upon being confronted with the ideas behind Western European art — which attempts to depict reality and individualism through the use of perspective, among other techniques — they struggle with the worldview of their own art form. Traditionally, they have seen themselves as charged with portraying the world as Allah sees it, not as man sees it. Anything else would undermine their artistic and religious traditions, and this conflict is what drives the entire narrative. The clash between the need to create art and to believe in a God is utterly fascinating and a bit reminiscent of My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok, which I also loved.

I won’t say too much more about the narrative itself, except that the glorious descriptions of color and detail really made me want to be able to see their work! Below is an awesome example that I found on Wikipedia:

Oh, and you might also be interested in my review from a few year’s ago of one of Pamuk’s other books, Snow. Check it out!