Tag Archives: my name is red

No comments

I Will Be Called Murderer

  By

MY NAME IS RED

Orhan Pamuk (Knopf, 1998) ISBN: 0-571-20047-8

My Name is Red is a complex murder mystery set in 16th century Istanbul.  It has taken me 4 attempts to read.  I can’t really point to why.  I suspect it might be a combination of my fundamental disinterest in the murder mystery genre, and a general failure to relate to very many of the characters.  Perhaps, too, it might just be that Orhan Pamuk’s prose, while beautiful, makes it difficult for me to feel the emotional pull of the story.  Since I can’t read Turkish it’s impossible for me to say whether this issue arises from the translation or from the author’s style itself.

Continue reading

  • You might also like

    • The Silence is Illusion

      I first came across Suki Kim as a panellist at the exceedingly awkward “Inside North Korea” talk at this year’s Melbourne Writers Festival.  I have written about this panel in more detail before, but Kim’s frustration at her co-panellists, and at the situation in and around North Korea generally, was … Continue reading