Day 10% in

Black

The old city streets

Day 1

Through the snowy lanes of the old city Black walks back into an Istanbul he left twelve years before, summoned by his uncle and drawn again to Shekure. The murder of the gilder Elegant has already set the city's painters against one another, and the winding streets, told in many voices, are where the mystery and the love story both begin.

The opening chapters

explicitBlack returns after twelve years to the streets of old Istanbul, the real Ottoman city of workshops and neighbourhoods where the miniaturists live and the murdered gilder is found; sited in the historic peninsula.

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The Sultan's book25% in

Master Osman

Topkapı Palace (the workshop)

The Sultan's book

Within Topkapı, the head illuminator Master Osman rules the imperial workshop, and it is here the Sultan has secretly commissioned a book in the Frankish, European manner that so troubles the devout. When the killer must be found, Osman and Black are given three days among the palace's treasures, and the question of art, whether to paint as God's world or as the eye sees it, turns deadly.

The palace chapters

explicitThe imperial miniaturists' workshop and treasury sit within Topkapı Palace, the real seat of the Ottoman Sultan; the secret book and the examination of the master painters take place there.

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The courtship50% in

Shekure

Enishte's house

The courtship

In Enishte's house the forbidden book takes shape and the widowed Shekure keeps her guarded household, watched over and watching, as Black presses his suit. The rooms where art, desire and danger gather, and where Enishte too will meet his death, are the intimate heart around which the wider mystery turns.

The house chapters

inspired byThe house of Black's uncle Enishte, where Shekure lives with her sons and the secret book is assembled, is drawn from the merchant houses of old Istanbul and sited in the historic city.

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The storyteller75% in

The murderer

The coffeehouse

The storyteller

In the smoky coffeehouse the painters gather at night, and a storyteller gives voice to a dog, a tree, the colour red and even the murderer, in the interludes that make the novel's chorus. The place the pious denounce as a den of sedition becomes the stage where the killer half-confesses and the fatal quarrel over images comes to its head.

The coffeehouse chapters

explicitThe Ottoman coffeehouse where the miniaturists gather and a storyteller performs is drawn from the real coffeehouses of sixteenth-century Istanbul, controversial and much-frequented; sited in the old city.

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The ending100% in

Black

The city in snow

The ending

As the snow keeps falling over Istanbul and the Bosphorus, the hunt for the murderer among the three suspect masters comes to its violent, sorrowful close. Pamuk ends on the passing of a whole way of seeing, the Persian-Ottoman art of the miniature giving way before the coming of the Western image, mourned even as the love story finds its uneasy peace.

The ending

explicitThe snow-covered city above the Bosphorus, where the final pursuit and reckoning play out, is the real Istanbul of the novel's winter setting; sited on the historic peninsula.

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