SOURCE: Schwartz, Lynne Sharon. “In the Beginning was the Book.” New Leader 84, no. 5 (September-October 2001): 23-5.

In the following review, Schwartz offers a positive assessment of My Name Is Red, noting the impact of Pamuk's writing on Turkish letters.

Orhan Pamuk is not only a superb writer, he is a cultural phenomenon. Equally at home in the traditions of ancient Islamic literature and Western postmodernism, he's the first Turkish novelist to win spectacular success in Europe and the United States. His four novels published here, of which the best by far is The White Castle (1991), are curious variations on a handful of themes: Turkey's Ottoman past as a stage for the clash and cross-fertilization of East and West; the infinite, tortuous complications of individual and national identity; and above all, the magical properties of books. In every Pamuk novel a book, real or imaginary, is the source or trigger...