Orhan Pamuk - GEBRAUCHT My Name is Red - Preis vom 02062023 050629 h

Zum Inhalt; habe das Buch leider noch nicht viel gelesen. Aber da der Prof. von Harvard dieses Werk zu einem Weltliteratur zählt, gehe ich mal davon aus, dass es Wert ist reinzuschauen.Content: Since the Prof. in Harvard dealt with this Book as World-Literature, I think it is worth to look at it

Brilliant book !

I remember only one other novel (Oscar Hijuelos’s “The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love”) more deserving of this quote by Ambrose Bierce : “The covers of this book are too far apart”.(Also, I fail to see how anyone can even remotely compare “My Name is Red” with “The Name of the Rose” other than for the word “name” in the title).It’s not that the world of Persian, Ottoman and Arab illuminators, miniature painters, gilders and calligraphers is not a fascinating subject; I just felt there was no need to spread this story over more than 500 pages with endless repetitions. Halfway through the book the reader will have comprehended the vast chasm existing between the art of the infidel “Frankish masters” with their own individual style, their life-like portraits, their perspectives, shadows and themes that had no need to be embedded in a story, and Islamic art with its fear of heresy and idolatry, its condemnation of creativeness (only Allah gives life to the lifeless) and of painting any other way than from Allah’s perspective, in other words art which is inextricably intertwined with and ruled by the Koran.Towards the end I was heartily sick of Bihzad and the old masters of Herat, of Shirin and Huesrev, of devils and jinns, of miniaturists spending decades painting the same old formulaic scenes, trees, horses, flowers, etc. until they ended up blind (or blinding themselves), of the endless list of cruel sultans, shahs and pashas torturing and slaughtering each other and of pretty young apprentices being beaten and raped by their masters.Not only does the story wear thin after a while, the characters are as flat, stiff and lifeless as the figures in a miniature painting, the love story between Black and Shekure is as dry as an old bone and as the characters never come to life, the dénouement of the murder mystery falls flat.The 3-star rating is a compromise between 4 stars for originality, setting and some beautiful descriptive passages and 2 stars for characters and plot.