SOURCE: Bukiet, Melvin Jules. “Perceptions of East and West.” Chicago Tribune Books (23 September 2001): 1, 5.

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...