The award of the 2006 Nobel Prize for literature to Orhan Pamuk prompts me to revisit this review of one of his better known novels.
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On a snowy night in old Istanbul, Elegant Effendi, a gilder noted for his work in decorating manuscripts with gold leaf, is lured to a deserted backstreet. Here his skull is smashed with a rock and his body dumped down a disused well.

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'Let's consider a piece by Bihzad, the master of masters, patron saint of all miniaturists. I happened across this masterpiece, which also nicely pertains to my situation because it's a depiction of murder, among the pages of a flawless ninety-year-old book of the Herat school.'

We know this is the murderer talking - though not his identity - because the chapter heading has told us so. If we had our wits about us, we could already be picking up clues to help us unravel the mystery, but our wits are somewhat befuddled at this early stage in the narrative. The quotation above is taken from the fourth of the fifty-nine chapters of 'My Name is Red'. The chapters are shared out among no fewer than twenty narrators. For example, Chapter 1 is ostensibly written posthumously by the spirit of Elegant, the murderer's first victim; Chapter 2 by Black, who will later emerge both as the male protagonist in the love affair that is one of the central strands of the story and as one of the detectives who eventually unmask the murderer; Chapter 3 by a dog.

And so on. Not all the narrators are major characters, or human, or even animal. If this were a game of Twenty Questions, vegetable and mineral would also feature, as would abstract. At first this multiplicity of unlikely story-tellers seems not only confusing but perverse, but there is method in the apparent madness, and the purpose becomes apparent as the tale unfolds.

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'My Name is Red', by the Turkish author Orhan Pamuk, is a complex tale told in a complicated fashion. It is set in the late 16th century, when Istanbul was the capital of the mighty Ottoman Empire that stretched from the Danube in the north-west to the Tigris in the east and the Nile in the south.

The Ottoman Sultan has ordered a lavishly illustrated book to be compiled as a diplomatic gift to the Doge of Venice. The commission for organising its compilation devolves on Enishte Effendi, Black's uncle. Enishte is chosen because he has visited Venice and is well-versed in the artistic techniques that have emerged in Renaissance Italy. He conceives the notion that the book will be most impressive and prestigious if it utilises some of those techniques - perspective, chiaroscuro, portraiture - rather than simply following the stylised traditions of Islamic art. With this in mind he subcontracts parts of the illustrative work piecemeal to Istanbul's leading decorative artists of the time, known by their nicknames - Butterfly, Olive and Stork - and the gilder Elegant, but briefs none of them fully on how their work is to be used.

Under the circumstances, this is no straightforward artistic commission, but one overshadowed by politics and religion. To illustrate in the infidel style will upset influential traditionalists, and might even be judged heretical. This potential for dangerous controversy serves to stir the seething stew of personal and professional rivalries between the contributing artists.

Enishte also seeks to involve Black, who has trained as an artist and calligrapher, in the preparation of the book. Black has recently returned from many years' travelling in the east, a self-imposed exile following his rejection as a suitor for the hand of his cousin Shekure, Enishte's daughter. Instead she married a cavalry officer by whom she has had two sons, but her husband has been missing for four years after failing to return from a campaign. Presuming him dead, and desperate for a surrogate father for her children, she is responsive to Black's renewed advances. But since she is not officially a widow, and since her brother-in-law Hasan is also enamoured of her, bringing their love affair to a happy ending does not prove to be a simple matter either.

These artistic and amorous issues are still unresolved when Enishte too is murdered. Black is rounded up by the Sultan's enforcers to help in the investigation, under the threat that he and the other artists will all be subjected to torture if the murderer is not identified within three days. As Black toils with Master Osman, the aged Head Illuminator at the Palace workshop, to detect the villain from stylistic clues, Shekure is left alone with her children to fend off Hasan and his hired henchmen.

Suddenly, after its long, leisurely opening, the plot gathers pace towards a climactic conclusion.

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'My Name is Red' is a historical novel encompassing a detective story, a love story and a philosophical debate. As such it is often compared with 'The Name of the Rose' by Umberto Eco. There are similarities, but there are also differences.

Both are superb in creating and conveying the historical context. Before reading this book, I had only the haziest notion of what 16th century Istanbul might be like to live in, but I now feel I know it well. I don't, of course, but Pamuk's recreation of it is so plausible and so well sustained that it pervades the reader's consciousness. The descriptive writing is rich. This is one of the book's successes.

As a detective story, I found it rather less successful. The range of suspects is quickly narrowed down to the three artists: Butterfly, Olive and Stork. For the reader, the clues to identifying the murderer among them are not those of means and opportunity - they all have both - but of pinpointing the crucial motive from what they themselves, in their chapters, have to say about their outlook and ambitions. This makes the reader's viewpoint subtly different from that of the detectives in the story, Black and Master Osman, who approach their task as a matter of artistic analysis.

This disparity in itself makes for unsatisfying puzzle-solving, but I had a further difficulty in that I found it hard to keep the distinctions between the three clear in my mind, and harder still to care about them. This may simply betray a lack of intellectual grip and emotional involvement

Pictures of My Name is Red - Orhan Pamuk

Cover of the UK edition

on my part, but I feel my attention could have been more effectively engaged had the puzzle been presented differently.

The love interest is handled much better, and is engaging. The character of Shekure is pivotal in this success. Is she really in love with Black, or simply using him? Clever, manipulative yet vulnerable, she keeps the reader guessing to the end, and caring about the outcome.

Finally, there is the philosophical debate, which is a multi-layered one. Superficially about the nature of Islamic art, it touches on more universal themes: of tradition versus innovation, of discipline versus inspiration, of orthodoxy versus individuality. And, of course, there are resonances for contemporary controversies about the Islamic and Western outlooks. These themes may or may not interest you, depending on taste, but to me they seemed more stimulating and relevant than the dry mediaeval theology of 'The Name of the Rose', and more delicately handled.

Indeed, overall, despite the weakness of its detective element, I thought that 'My Name is Red' is at least as good a book as 'The Name of the Rose', which is saying something.

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Orhan Pamuk was born in 1952 in Istanbul where, apart from a brief sojourn in New York, he has lived ever since. He was trained as an architect and journalist, and has published six novels, of which four have been translated into English. 'My Name is Red', first published in 1998, is his best known work. He is also a noted authority on Islamic art, and was adviser to the recent exhibition of historic Turkish art at the Royal Academy, London.

Although he is Turkey's most internationally acclaimed author, Pamuk is a controversial figure in his own country. His latest novel 'Snow' deals with sensitive contemporary themes, including religious and nationalist extremism. He was last year charged by the Turkish authorities with "publicly denigrating the Turkish nation" for lending his voice to calls for greater openness about the massacres of Armenian and Kurdish minorities in the early part of the last century. The charge was eventually dropped after an international outcry.

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When I first read 'My Name is Red' two years ago I was convinced that it was an important book, but I didn't much enjoy it. It was easy to find things to admire - the sustained atmosphere, the characterisation, the scholarship, the knitting together of the many-threaded plot - but persevering through to the pay-off was heavy going. Maybe that was why it took me so long to review it.

Coming back after an interval to write the review, I thought "I'd better have a quick skim through to refresh the memory" but before long I found myself re-reading every word, and savouring them. I saw how much I'd missed the first time round, and how cleverly it all fitted together. Mark Twain once described Wagner's music as "better than it sounds". Pamuk's writing is similarly better than it reads on first acquaintance. It is complex and deep, and repays deep attention.

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'My Name is Red' by Orhan Pamuk, translated into English by Erdağ Göknar, is published in the UK in paperback by Faber and Faber, ISBN 0-571-21224-7, cover price £7.99. I notice that Amazon has it for just £3.99, surely a bargain.

© torr 2005