"My Name is Red" by Orhan Pamuk is a brilliant, well-written book. The author, a recent Nobel Laureate in Literature, is one of my favorites and his "Istanbul: Memories of a City" is one of my favorite books. His strength lies in the ability to articulate the odd position of Istanbul, as a city forever straddling West and East. These complicated questions of identity are combined with a sort of "mischievousness" or playfulness with the world (I cannot think of a better way to describe it) which permeates his writing and makes it so enjoyable.

The book is craftily constructed- each chapter is a first-person narrative of a different part of the story by a different person (sometimes drawings or paintings themselves). But "My Name is Red," which is one of Pamuk's more popular novels, seems to exist uneasily in two different genres. The first is a mystery: a group of miniaturists in 16th century Istanbul are working on a secret manuscript for the Sultan done in the "Frankish" method. One of them ends up dead and it takes the investigations of Black Effendi to find out which of the miniaturists is the killer. The second is a meditation on art and perception. Both of these things would exist fine on their own but at times, I found their marriage to be difficult. I found the mystery to be confusing and obtuse and the philosophy a bit irritating when I wanted to focus on the mystery. Also, I personally was not interested with the topic of the philosophy.

I think the work is unique but is one which I did not enjoy as much as I had expected. Perhaps the idea of the book not meeting my expectations is part of the problem- I had approached the book looking for perhaps more of a straight forward mystery and got something much more complex. This book is not a simple narrative and should be read when one can fully devote time and concentration to its very interesting ideas- if not, you may miss something.