SOURCE: Levi, Jonathan. “The Plague.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (7 October 2001): 9.

In the following review, Levi applauds My Name Is Red as a “modern classic,” commending Pamuk's representation of “the intense life of artists negotiating the devilishly sharp edge of Islam 1,000 years after its birth.”

Istanbul, 1591: Black, a painter of miniatures, returns to his native Istanbul from his travels into Persia and the far reaches of the sultan's empire. For 12 years he has tried to escape the vision of his beautiful cousin, Shekure, whose hand was denied him by his master and uncle, Enishte Effendi. Riding into town, Black discovers that Shekure has been recently widowed and one of Enishte's illustrators has been murdered.

Love and crime in an exotic city have always proved a compelling combination to Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, whether in his 1990 contemporary novel The White Castle or his historical The Black Book. Yet it...