MY NAME IS RED

I've finally managed to do something that I wanted to do for a long time:read a good book and finish it.And what a book!!!One of the best I've read.The sheer size of the subject,the era its attempts to encompass and bring to life, the meticulous detailing of history of a past almost forgotten, in all its aspects the novel is a work worth applauding.
The book unfolds through the eyes of each of its characters in a sort of confessional that everyone indulges in thus providing perspectives that are varied and interesting. The 'writer' then is blown all over, he's everybody and nobody-a wildly innovative use of post-structural narrative of many voices, manyness. The tapestry of the novel is rich,dark and embellished with the lives,loves,suspicions,fears,doubts,secrets and murders that weave around the seductive socio-cultural life of late 16th century Istanbul. Its worthwhile keeping in mind that it was this period in history that also witnessed the creative crescendo of the European renaissance.
The book has at its center themes that are as relevant today as they were 500 years ago.The expression of creativity,the conflict between the indigenous and the foreign,the nature of artistic discourse, concepts of purity in art and culture, a society dealing with the rise of religious extremism, sanctions on artistic and creative freedom and the intertwining of lives in such an environment.
Turkey has always been the melting pot of converging cultural ideas and none more so than due to its geographical location of bridging two continents,continuously at ideological loggerheads.The novel not only reinforces this historocal occurence but also delves into the making of a modernistic Turkish intellectual and cultural identity that incorporates influences from China and faraway India, not to mention its rich Islamic conciousness.
However, the genius of Pamuk lies in this that such weighty issues do not interfere with the flow of narrative and place obstacles in the way of gripping story telling.All these elements are so tightly reined in to the murder mystery thriller genre that neither seems to outdo the other approach. The blending is organic, the effect brilliant.

This one is for the ages...