My Name Is Red

Over nine snowbound days in the winter of 1591, a miniaturist is found murdered in Istanbul, and Black, newly returned to the city, must find the killer among the Sultan's painters while courting the widow Shekure. Pamuk maps the real Ottoman capital: the workshops and streets of the old city, the imperial palace of Topkapi where the Sultan's secret European-style book is being made, the coffeehouse where the miniaturists gather, and the snow-covered city above the Bosphorus, in a novel that is also a meditation on art, faith and the clash of East and West.

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

explicit Black 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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