"A city's intellect," soliloquizes the murderer in "My Name is Red," "ought to be measured not by its scholars, libraries, miniaturists, calligraphers and schools, but by the number of crimes insidiously committed on its dark streets over thousands of years. By this logic, doubtless, Istanbul is the world's most intelligent city."
This book, winner of the 2003 International IMPAC Dublin literary award, is set in the Ottoman capital in the late 1590s. Its sprawling narrative, combining a murder mystery with discourses on medieval art and religious fervor, and a love story, has rightly elicited comparisons with Umberto Eco's 1980 best-seller, "The Name of the Rose" -- even the titles display a vague similarity -- which took place in a northern Italian monastery in 1327.
It seems that the empire's leading patron of the arts, the Sultan, has put his top artisans to work on yet another lavishly illustrated book to extol the glories of his reign. For reasons that are gradually revealed, one of four key artists is bludgeoned to death and thrown down a well. Was one of his three colleagues the killer?