[In the following review, Hibbard asserts that My Name Is Red explores themes that are “highly relevant” to contemporary Turkish society.]

Colors figure prominently in this historical mystery [My Name Is Red], set in sixteenth-century Istanbul, which takes us into the lives of a handful of miniaturist painters, one of whom is murdered by a fellow artist in the first chapter, narrated by the corpse itself. “Try to discover who I am from my choice of words and colors,” we are told toward the opening of the novel in a chapter entitled “I Will Be Called a Murderer.” The ensuing narrative, in a manner similar to Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, gradually pushes toward a resolution of the mystery while at the same time giving us a flavor of life in the days of Sultan Murat III and introducing us to the rich traditions of miniaturist painting. At stake is that very way of life. The murders (yes, there is more than one) seem to be motivated by wishes to adhere strictly to Muslim prohibitions on representational art and stave off the corrupting Western influences of Venetian portrait painting that elevate the individual at the expense of more selfless, collective endeavors. The themes of Pamuk's novel are highly relevant for a Turkey that even today is caught in the crosswinds of the competing values of West and East. Near the end of the novel a mob enflamed by the words of Preacher Nusret Hoja of Erzurum attacks a coffeehouse, killing a storyteller who they have determined is corrupting morals and overstepping the bounds of religion. Pamuk, however, is not at all didactic; rather, he simply displays the cultural dynamics at work. As in Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, the story's baton is handed from one character to another and moves through time, producing a clever narrative scheme we only wholly grasp on the last page.