RaveThe GuardianAlthough it features a large cast, My Name Is Red is essentially the story of Black, a failed illustrator who has spent 12 years in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire after falling in love with his beautiful cousin, Shekure, and being rejected by her … As Black simultaneously tries to woo Shekure and identify the killer, now hanging about in coffee houses, now talking to illustrators, now poring over the priceless illuminated manuscripts in the sultan's treasury, Pamuk takes the reader into the strange and beautiful world of Islamic art, in which Western notions no longer make sense … Pamuk is the real thing, and this book might well be one of the few recent works of fiction that will be remembered at the end of this century.
