SOURCE: Hibbard, Allen. Review of My Name Is Red, by Orhan Pamuk. Review of Contemporary Fiction 21, no. 3 (fall 2001): 203-04.

In the following review, Hibbard asserts that My Name Is Red explores themes that are “highly relevant” to contemporary Turkish society.

Colors figure prominently in this historical mystery [My Name Is Red], set in sixteenth-century Istanbul, which takes us into the lives of a handful of miniaturist painters, one of whom is murdered by a fellow artist in the first chapter, narrated by the corpse itself. “Try to discover who I am from my choice of words and colors,” we are told toward the opening of the novel in a chapter entitled “I Will Be Called a Murderer.” The ensuing narrative, in a manner similar to Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, gradually pushes toward a resolution of the mystery while at the same time giving us a...