The Nobel Prize winner and one of today’s most prominent contemporary Turkish writers delivers a novel that is a fiendishly devious mystery, a beguiling love story, a brilliant symposium on the power of art, and a modern classic … rich and essential (Los Angeles Times Book Review)-set amid the splendor and religious intrigue of sixteenth-century Istanbul.

The Sultan has commissioned a cadre of the most
acclaimed artists in the land to create a great book celebrating the glories of his
realm. Their task: to illuminate the work in the European style. But because figurative
art can be deemed an affront to Islam, this commission is a dangerous proposition
indeed. The ruling elite therefore mustn’t know the full scope or nature of the project,
and panic erupts when one of the chosen miniaturists disappears. The only clue to
the mystery-or crime?-lies in the half-finished illuminations themselves. Part fantasy
and part philosophical puzzle, My Name is Red is a kaleidoscopic journey to the intersection
of art, religion, love, sex and power.

Translated from the Turkish by Erda M Goeknar