Skip to main content

My Name is Red


Book Review

“To God belongs the East and the West,” says one of the prominent characters who commits two murders in the novel.  “But East is east and West is west,” pat comes the response from Black, the one who identifies the murderer.

Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk’s novel, My Name is Red, revolves round the European (West) and the Turkish (East) perspectives of art.  The artist is free to look at the object according to his individual inner truth and understanding in the Western view.  Such an artist has an individual style.  But the genuine Islamic view has to see an object as Allah would see it.  Any individual nuance  given by the artist is blasphemy. 

The novel is set in 1591, a year before the 1000th anniversary (by the Islamic calendar) of Prophet Mohammed’s flight from Mecca to Medina.  The Sultan wants to celebrate the anniversary by publishing a special book which will be illustrated by the best artists (miniaturists) of the country.  Enishte Effendi is given charge of the work and he mixes the Western perspective with the Islamic one.  Soon one of the artists is killed mysteriously.  Eventually Enishte is murdered too by the same killer who is one of the miniaturists with his own ambition and greed.

In the imagination of the people, the motive for the murders is mixed with the activities of the preacher Husret Hoja who is radically opposed to anything that is un-Islamic.  Even coffeehouses are dens of sins, according to him.  His followers go around punishing people who go astray from the true path of the Koran. 

The novel was originally published in 1998 and the English translation followed the WTC meltdown by Osama bin Laden’s religious followers.  No wonder, the book received wide publicity in the West at that time.  Pamuk raises serious questions about the validity of the kind of fanaticism foisted on people by preachers like Husret Hoja “who  were (in the words of a character) desperate to find an aspect contrary to the religion.”

The novel brilliantly explores the meaning of art and religion.  When one of the artists says, “There’s much that an artist with a clear conscience has to fear in our day,” he is putting a succinct question mark on the meaning and validity of religion.  If clear conscience goes against religion, then what is the significance of religion? 

Essentially the novel is an exploration of the meaning of art.  It is also an exploration of what distinguishes the East from the West.  Religion appears more like a villain whenever it makes its appearance. 

There is a love affair too.  The most beautiful Shekure is widowed though no one really knows what happened to her husband who disappeared four years ago in a war.  Black was in love with her from the time she was a pubescent girl.  But he was sent into exile for twelve years by Shekure’s father, Enishte Effendi.  The same Effendi takes him back after the exile and the love grows.  But there are rivals including Shekure’s younger brother-in-law who argues that his brother is not dead and hence she has to live in the husband’s house.  She has been living with her father in order to escape from this brother-in-law’s carnal desires. He supports his view with their religion’s peculiar laws regarding divorce.  This whole romance adds much colour and verve to the novel.  

Orhan Pamuk
It is not at all an easy novel to read, the romance notwithstanding.  Each chapter is narrated by a particular character and the whole thing reads like a big jigsaw puzzle that the reader has to put together.  More than that, many parts are like debates or discussions on art.  However, the murder mystery creeps on to the reader right in chapter one which is narrated by the murdered person himself.  Sometimes a dog or the colour red becomes the narrator.  Even Death appears as one of the narrators.

Those who love challenging books will find this novel appealing.  They must also have a taste for philosophy.


Indian Bloggers

Comments

  1. I could not complete this novel,when I tried reading at 5-6years back.I found it difficult. I think I should give it one more try...
    Thanks for the review !

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I too gave up many times earlier. It demands much patience.

      Delete
  2. I am fond of both philosophy and mystery. Definitely my cup of tea it is. Thanks for sharing your take.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Ghost of a Banyan Tree

  Image from here Fiction Jaichander Varma could not sleep. It was past midnight and the world outside Jaichander Varma’s room was fairly quiet because he lived sufficiently far away from the city. Though that entailed a tedious journey to his work and back, Mr Varma was happy with his residence because it afforded him the luxury of peaceful and pure air. The city is good, no doubt. Especially after Mr Modi became the Prime Minister, the city was the best place with so much vikas. ‘Where’s vikas?’ Someone asked Mr Varma once. Mr Varma was offended. ‘You’re a bloody antinational mussalman who should be living in Pakistan ya kabristan,’ Mr Varma told him bluntly. Mr Varma was a proud Indian which means he was a Hindu Brahmin. He believed that all others – that is, non-Brahmins – should go to their respective countries of belonging. All Muslims should go to Pakistan and Christians to Rome (or is it Italy? Whatever. Get out of Bharat Mata, that’s all.) The lower caste Hindus co...

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Romance in Utopia

Book Review Title: My Haven Author: Ruchi Chandra Verma Pages: 161 T his little novel is a surfeit of sugar and honey. All the characters that matter are young employees of an IT firm in Bengaluru. One of them, Pihu, 23 years and all too sweet and soft, falls in love with her senior colleague, Aditya. The love is sweetly reciprocated too. The colleagues are all happy, furthermore. No jealousy, no rivalry, nothing that disturbs the utopian equilibrium that the author has created in the novel. What would love be like in a utopia? First of all, there would be no fear or insecurity. No fear of betrayal, jealousy, heartbreak… Emotional security is an essential part of any utopia. There would be complete trust between partners, without the need for games or power struggles. Every relationship would be built on deep understanding, where partners complement each other perfectly. Miscommunication and misunderstanding would be rare or non-existent, as people would have heightened emo...

Tanishq and the Patriots

Patriots are a queer lot. You don’t know what all things can make them pick up the gun. Only one thing is certain apparently: the gun for anything. When the neighbouring country behaves like a hoard of bandicoots digging into our national borders, we will naturally take up the gun. But nowadays we choose to redraw certain lines on the map and then proclaim that not an inch of land has been lost. On the other hand, when a jewellery company brings out an ad promoting harmony between the majority and the minority populations, our patriots take up the gun. And shoot down the ad. Those who promote communal harmony are traitors in India today. The sacred duty of the genuine Indian patriot is to hate certain communities, rape their women, plunder their land, deny them education and other fundamental rights and basic requirements. Tanishq withdrew the ad that sought to promote communal harmony. The patriot’s gun won. Aapka Bharat Mahan. In the novel Black Hole which I’m writing there is...

A Lesson from Little Prince

I joined the #WriteAPageADay challenge of Blogchatter , as I mentioned earlier in another post. I haven’t succeeded in writing a page every day, though. But as long as you manage to write a minimum of 10,000 words in the month of Feb, Blogchatter is contented. I woke up this morning feeling rather vacant in the head, which happens sometimes. Whenever that happens to me but I do want to get on with what I should, I fall back on a book that has inspired me. One such book is Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince . I have wished time and again to meet Little Prince in person as the narrator of his story did. We might have interesting conversations like the ones that exist in the novel. If a sheep eats shrubs, will he also eat flowers? That is one of the questions raised by Little Prince [LP]. “A sheep eats whatever he meets,” the narrator answers. “Even flowers that have thorns?” LP is interested in the rose he has on his tiny planet. When he is told that the sheep will eat f...