[In the following review, Bukiet compliments My Name Is Red as a “meditation on authenticity and originality,” describing Pamuk as an accomplished “chronicler” of the Turkish consciousness.]

Few boundaries on this planet are more distinct than that of the narrow nautical channel called the Dardanelles, which separates Europe from Asia within the nation of Turkey.

To the east lie several thousand miles of harshly variegated landscape that has given birth to harsh rulers from Genghis and the rest of the Khans to Tamerlane and, over the last century, the Shah of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini and Saddam Hussein, while westward stretch more-temperate climes inhabited by presumably more-civilized though often no-less-murderous Europeans. Straddling that border, partaking of East and West, sits the city of Istanbul, formerly Constantinople and yet further back in time Byzantium, and in that city sits Orhan Pamuk, chronicler of its consciousness.

The author of several previous novels, including The White Castle and The Black Book, Pamuk could probably live no place else on Earth. Certainly his new novel, My Name Is Red, could occur no place else. Its subject is the difference in perceptions between East and West, and its main characters are miniaturists who wrestle with those differences while illuminating manuscripts for Sultan Murat III toward the end of the 16th Century.

Guided by an older man named Enishte, or “Uncle,” four of the sultan's finest artists. Butterfly, Stork, Olive and Elegant, are working privately on sections of what will become a larger, unified masterwork. Until their era, such artists adhered to a traditional Islamic style that aimed to ornament rather than represent its text, because identifiable images were considered idolatrous. Yet the court had recently been influenced—or tainted—by so-called Venetian art. What's the difference? Well, by placing a person in the center rather than on the periphery of a canvas, one implies that humanity may be as central as deity, and by embracing techniques of perspective one sees the world from a human point of view rather than God's. This is incendiary to the established order though nonetheless enticing, because portraiture provides “‘a memento of [its subjects'] lives and a sign of their riches, power and influence—so they might always be there, standing before us, announcing their existence, nay, their individuality and distinction.’”

Two plots take place against this art-historical background. The first involves the relationship between Enishte's daughter, Shekure, and her erst-while suitor, Black. Shunned years earlier for another man who has since been lost in battle, Black has just returned to Istanbul to reclaim his beloved. Secondly, and more ominously, one of the miniaturists believes that the result of his work is heretical. To stop it, he kills his co-worker Elegant and then Enishte. Driven mad by theology, the killer believes that he and his colleagues are “attempting to depict the world that God perceives, not the world that they see. Doesn't that amount to challenging God's unity, that is—Allah forbid—isn't it saying that I could do the work of God?”

But who is the mysterious killer? The passionate Shekure enlists the tormented Black to uncover his identity. Thus the dual plots twine together against an intellectual background.

Yet before considering the novel in its entirety, we must toss one further element into the mix: Today's literature may have more in common with its medieval ancestors than with realistic novels of the intervening centuries. This half-antique, half-contemporary style reveals itself in the structure of My Name Is Red.

To begin with, the story is told from more than a dozen perspectives, including the illustrators', and also, apparently, many of their illustrations: a dog, a tree, a coin, and, perhaps connecting to the enigmatic title, the color red. Dead people also tell their tales.

Within the individual narrative voices, we hear multiple mini-essays that pose questions about style and what effect art has on its viewers and its makers. More so even than the twin plots of love and death, these questions are the true center of My Name Is Red. In other words, the focal point of the novel is its background of pronouncements upon its own nature. Some are worldly and cynical. For example, Butterfly says, “if truth be told, money and fame are the inalienable rights of the talented,” and Enishte notes that art is created “‘to escape the prattle of others, to escape the community, but … we also want those we've forsaken to see and appreciate the inspired pictures we've made.’” Other comments, however, are intellectual and ontological, such as Stork's, “To know is to remember that you've seen.”

This philosophical inquiry comes to a peak when Olive, Butterfly and Stork, the three suspects in the murders, deliver final statements that echo yet contrast with one another. The first is, “When I draw a magnificent horse, I become that magnificent horse,” the second, “When I draw a magnificent horse, I become a great master of old drawing that horse,” and the last, “When I draw a magnificent horse, I am who I am, nothing more.”

Obviously, Pamuk is getting at a subject that has compelled modern thinkers from Heidegger to Derrida: what it means to perceive and then to interpret one's perceptions by representing them. Thus, My Name Is Red is a meditation on authenticity and originality. In probing these matters, Pamuk frequently comes up with lines of transcendent clarity, as when he has Enishte say, “‘simply existing in this world is a very special, very mysterious event.’” Yet, as in much contemporary philosophy, he sometimes veers into gassy reflection: “I don't want to be a tree, I want to be its meaning.” One is not sure, exactly, what this, well, means.

It's ambitious to work on so many levels at once, and though Pamuk is more often than not up to the task, some of his levels are inevitably more successful than others. Many of the characters in the mystery (call it the Western) section of My Name Is Red are portrayed as flatly as Eastern archetypes. Their generic names, Butterfly, Olive, etc., preclude the kind of personal knowledge we expect in our portrait-like novels. Even when one of them is revealed to be the killer, we can't distinguish him from the rest and can't therefore feel the satisfaction of resolution.

On the other hand, the cold logic of what we might deem the Eastern section is usually delivered with a sharp particularity. Thus, while the Western art discussed here is “‘less focused on ornamentation and intricate design and more on straightforward representation,’” the book in which this discussion occurs is at its best when it is focused on intricate design.

All of this is hard to grasp for a reader—and reviewer—yet that may be the truest definition of art. As the killer notes, “‘A great painter does not content himself by affecting us with his masterpieces; ultimately, he succeeds in changing the landscape of our minds.’” Pamuk may not have told a fully fleshed story, but he has surely accomplished this larger and infinitely trickier goal.