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Review: My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk

A rich, tightly-woven literary tapestry whose secrets lie in elaborate details, red herrings and in the depth of the soul of its maker, celebrating the beauty, imagination and intelligence of ancient artworks and methods of painting.

“ W hy does man not see things? He is himself standing in the way: he conceals things .” “ What are man’s truths ultimately? Merely his irrefutable errors “. (Friedrich Nietzsche)

In My Name is Red by Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk, the murder of one miniaturist – Elegant Effendi – was committed within the circle of miniaturists working for the Sultan in medieval Istanbul. At the same time, thirty-six year old Black returns to his hometown of Istanbul after the absence of twelve years to seek once again the hand of his beloved Shekure, an opportunity that was denied to him twelve years previously. Unwittingly, Black becomes entangled in the intrigues of miniaturists working under Enishte Effendi, Black’s uncle and Shekure’s father. Masterfully, Pamuk takes us deep within the art circle of medieval craftsmen who labour to produce a mysterious new book, a circle replete with professional jealousy, narcissism, hidden love and, above all, differences as to the proper way of painting and representing pictures under one strict religious canon. In this historical novel, Persian art-forms clash violently with rising Venetian art influences as Black starts to realise that, in order to find the murderer of Elegant Effendi, it is necessary to go deep into the worldviews and art opinions of each of the three suspected miniaturists – “Stork”, “Olive” and “Butterfly”, testing their loyalties and beliefs.

Firstly, My Name is Red is an intriguing murder-mystery that plays with the reader, challenging them to identify the murderer before they reach the end. There are some clues as to the identity of the murderer scattered about in the narrative as we read about secrets that harbour the four great miniaturists – “Stork”, “Olive”, “Butterfly” and murdered Elegant Effendi – while working for the Sultan through both Master Osman and Enishte Effendi. These two masters have different views about the rise in popularity of Venetian art-forms and their influence on their traditional methods of painting.

Who could have killed Elegant Effendi? Another jealous miniaturist? Or maybe a religious fanatic dissatisfied with the way the four miniaturists started working on a new book in secrecy? What is the nature of the new book commissioned by the Sultan? Was it really designed to depict images that go contrary to Islamic faith? Black soon finds himself tasked not only with winning Shekure and her father’s affection, but also finding the murderer as another murder is committed soon afterwards and Shekure feels torn between her allegiance to her brother-in-law (as matrimonial law dictates since her husband has not been declared legally dead) and her devotion to her father. Black realises that, to know the identity of the murderer, it is necessary to go to the earliest foundations of Persian art, its inspirations and consider the nature of its relationship with its western counterpart. Pictures start to speak volumes in the book as Black discovers how past artworks shaped the present miniaturists’ styles and it is here that the answer to the murder puzzle may lie.

“The beauty and mystery of this world only emerges through affection, attention, interest and compassion; if you want to live in that paradise where happy mares and stallions live, open your eyes wide and actually see this world by attending to its colours, details and irony ” [Pamuk/Göknar, 1998/2001: 452].

Two previous books that I reviewed – Mohsin Hamid’s Moth Smoke [2000] and Elif Shafak’s 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World [2019] can be compared to My Name is Red since the three most likely drew inspiration from a common source/literary tradition. “Coincidentally”, Shafak’s book 10 Minutes 38 Seconds begins the same way as Pamuk’s My Name is Red – one spirit of a dead person starts talking to us, explaining their curious position and seeking retribution. In My Name is Red, the spirit of dead Elegant Effendi, whose corpse was thrown into a well, starts to recall his life and we get to know his professional circle. Also, as in Mohsin Hamid’s Moth Smoke, My Name is Red presents its story from the multitude of viewpoints, each competing for our attention as we read on and each trying to convince us with its rightness. If in Moth Smoke , there were only three or four other perspectives, in My Name is Red there are perspectives of Black, Shekure, Esther, Enishte Effendi, Master Osman, the three remaining miniaturists, not to mention the perspectives of inanimate objects and animals. The book results in a psychologically-intense ride that presents curious (sometimes black humour) situations that are recounted from different points of view. It is as though Pamuk does not let us see the wood for the trees – as we read on, we are blinded or diverted by different subjective opinions which do not let us see the broader picture or “objective” truth. Paradoxically, we, as readers, are both omniscient as to what is going on and “blind” at the same time because, even though we are cognisant of what is going on in the minds of each of the narrators, we are not told the most important thing and get lost in numerous details of the narration.

Nizami_-_Khusraw_discovers_Shirin_bathing_in_a_pool

Secondly, My Name is Red is a deep reflection on the nature and the making of art – on its outside influences and development. Pamuk pits the Eastern tradition of art presentation (that puts emphasis on repetition and on the anonymity of artists) against the Western influence (including signatures and portraiture). Many characters in the novel lament the growing “westernisation” of their art, fearing what will be the final consequence regarding their religion and traditions. Something is being lost in their loyalty and devotion to Allah as art starts imitating life too closely (only Allah can be the source of all true creations) and certain unworthy personages take the central stage in paintings.

There are also fears of Ottoman art’s historic roots and old masters’ methods being forgotten and ignored through the vanity of certain miniaturists who want to leave their own signatures or new styles behind. Thus, amidst the murder-mystery, there are also fables told on painters’ styles being equated with mistakes, and on the admirable nature of blindness for artists as Black tries to make sense of this paradox of the trade of making pictures in a Muslim city, hoping it will lead him to the murderer: “ the sincerity of the miniaturist….doesn’t emerge in moments of talent and perfection; on the contrary, it emerges through slips of the tongue, mistakes, fatigues and frustration ” [Pamuk/Göknar, 1998/2001: 243]; “ what exposes us is not the subject, which others have commissioned from us…but the hidden sensibilities we include in the painting as we render that subject ” [Pamuk/Göknar, 1998/2001: 422]; “ a great painter does not content himself by affecting us with his masterpieces; ultimately he succeeds in changing the landscape of our minds ” [Pamuk/Göknar, 1998/2001: 258]. Pamuk lets us step within the beautiful paintings of the old masters of the Ottoman Empire and we walk through the armies and lovers gazing at each other from across the distances, enabling our imagination to fuse with the best paintings made in the Middle East.

There is a third aspect to My Name is Red. We get to know Shekure, the beautiful daughter of Enishte Effendi, quite well – her husband is presumed dead after he marched to war four years ago and she is left with her two young sons. The arrival of Black disrupts her brother-in-law Hasan’s courtship of her and we realise that Black has always been passionately in love with Shekure…or has he? Here, art creeps in once again and life starts imitating art. The subjective nature of love is linked to the subjective viewing of artworks , and Black and Shekure’s courtship is linked to one of the oldest Persian fables – Hüsrev and Shirin by Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi, as well as to the falling in love with the presentation of the image of one’s beloved first: “ love…must be understood, not through the logic, but through its illogic ” [1998/2001: 658]. The colour red subtly creeps in and repeats itself where we find ourselves closer to truth. Red stands for blood and violence, but also for passion as Black’s lust becomes uncontrollable even though his heart remains “pure” like that of a child: “ for if a lover’s face survives emblazoned on your heart, the world is still your home” [1998/2001: 49]. Satan and Death both have their say in this book too – “ what we essentially want is to draw something unknown to us in all its shadowiness, not something we know in all its illumination ” [1998/2001: 202], and, by the end, the book becomes one unforgettable adventure into the mysteries of art, life, love and death.

🕌 The conclusion is that My Name is Red , translated from the Turkish by Erdağ Göknar, is an evocative, richly-layered and vivid murder-mystery with one unusual structure that immerses us into the mysteries of Ottoman paintings and in the atmosphere of medieval Istanbul. It is a true page-turner steeped in the history of the Ottoman art where fables and reality, as well as life and art, inexplicably merge to produce a one-of-a-kind story.

My Name Is Red

By orhan pamuk, a philosophical art mystery.

Huh. I liked this book in theory. My Name is Red reads like a philosophical mystery, except it’s only about art philosophy. It’s a story about a murder among a group of miniaturists (which are basically artists), and it is set in the Ottoman Empire. The book itself was originally written in Turkish.

The idea is that they are working on book of illustrations that reflects a style that is considered to be sacrilegious in that it is considered idolatry, detracting from the glorification of God, etc. Among them, there has been a murder of one of the miniaturists. There’s more to the plot line than just this, but the main crux of the novel is how the main character, Black, investigates by speaking to the suspects regarding their views on various aspects of art, while at the same time the unidentified murderer discusses his thoughts as well.

Theoretically, you should be trying to figure out who is the murderer based on these discussions of art philosophy. It was good in terms of writing, pacing, etc., but I think my appreciation of this book is largely on an academic level. If you think you’d enjoy theoretical discourses on art, for example considering what “is” art and whether things like personal style detracts from art and the representation of “truth,” then you’d probably love this book. It might be a little inaccessible to some, but it’s definitely worth a read for art lovers or anyone looking to venture into very well-written, but unfamiliar territory.

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My Name Is Red

Orhan Pamuk and Erdag Gokna | 3.93 | 44,378 ratings and reviews

Ranked #2 in Turkey , Ranked #3 in Turkish — see more rankings .

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#99 in Copenhagen
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#24 in Nobel

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Review: My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk

Orhan Pamuk has been on my list of writers to sample for a while. I started with My Name Is Red because its focus on illuminated manuscripts appealed to me. I disregarded the reviews which suggested this is not the ‘best’ place to start with Pamuk. Alas, I was cocky. I thought my knowledge of history, memories of Istanbul, and hours spent copying/painting manuscripts would give me a leg up. They didn’t. I’ve read books set in unfamiliar cultures before, but My Name Is Red feels truly foreign and reminiscent of that moment in Istanbul when I realized Turkish is a tricky language. But instead of squinting at signs, I was scratching my head at Pamuk’s mythical, artistic, and philosophical diversions. In all cases, something was familiar, but I was miles away.

From the back cover: At once a fiendishly devious mystery, a beguiling love story, and a brilliant symposium on the power of art, My Name Is Red is a transporting tale set amid the splendor and religious intrigue of sixteenth-century Istanbul. The Sultan has commissioned a cadre of the most acclaimed artists in the land to create a great book celebrating the glories of his realm. Their task: to illuminate the work in the European style. But because figurative art can be deemed an affront to Islam, this commission is a dangerous proposition indeed. And when one of the chosen miniaturists disappears, the only clue to the mystery lies in the half-finished illuminations themselves. Part fantasy and part philosophical puzzle, My Name Is Red is a kaleidoscope journey into the intersection of art, religion, love, sex, and power.

There are scenes in this book that don’t require outside knowledge to appreciate. The story is told from a rotating set of perspectives that includes a corpse, dog, gold coin, and various illustrations. Chapters are titled “I Am a Corpse,” “I Am Called Black,” “I Am a Dog,” “I Will Be Called a Murderer,” and so on. The language/tone is regulated so that even reading the perspective of the murdered man and the murderer isn’t enough for a reader to sniff out the guilty party. There are particularly brilliant moments when the perspective shifts within a scene to allow multiple characters to comment in the moment rather than through retrospectives. There’s something cinematic about this: I imagine a camera moving around a room, changing views, zooming in, then panning out. When drawings or props speak, they offer new angles on their owners so everyone is seen inside and out, even if they’re alone. A favorite section is narrated by a gold coin and begins grandly:

Behold! I am a twenty-two-carat Ottoman Sultani gold coin and I bear the glorious insignia of His Excellency Our Sultan, Refuge of the World. … Hello, hello, greetings to all the master artists and assorted guests. Your eyes widen as you behold my glimmer, you thrill as I shimmer in the light of the oil lamp, and finally you bristle with envy at my owner. (102)

But gives way to a woeful confession:

All right then, I confess. I’m not a genuine twenty-two-carat Ottoman Sultani gold coin minted at the Chemberlitash Mint. I’m counterfeit. They made me in Venice using adulturated gold and brought me here, passing me off as twenty-two-carat Ottoman gold. Your sympathy and understanding are much obliged. (103)

This gold coin—with its humble secret, grand tales of being passed through the streets of Istanbul, and fear of being hoarded in a jar—has more (and better) ‘character’ development than human characters in crummy novels.

I enjoy this kind of diversion because the coin’s journey produced memorable descriptions of the people and city. Other meanderings have less obvious pay-offs. Pamuk includes a fair amount of myths and stories. Some read like Aesop’s fables, but the morals given at their close will not be familiar to western audiences. They take time from a cleverly built whodunnit, but their thematic framework illuminates the main action. My Name Is Red is plainly written for a Turkish audience (and it’s written in Turkish), but these stories allow it to be intelligible to a western audience as well.

The philosophy and mystery are great, but the love triangle is a shaky business. The woman, Shekure, must choose between her brother-in-law whom she dislikes (her husband is missing, presumed dead) and her old flame. She’s clearly written by a man and I had a hard time taking her seriously. Also strange is the fact that Shekure’s two children are named Shevket and Orhan. Shevket is the name of Orhan Pamuk’s older brother in real life, Shekure is the name of his mother, and Orhan is his own first name. Does this mean something? So glad to be out of school—this is the kind of thing that would require an essay on my least favorite subject: authorial intent.

(“What does this mean?” is the theme of this review by the way.)

Looking at the back cover now, I see the mystery is given little mention next to the talk of art. This book is more easily sold to a philosopher/artist/historian than someone looking for a cerebral mystery to take to the beach (where I read a portion). As such, it’s hard to summarize, but if you’re into these subjects and have time to read slowly and carefully, I expect you’ll be impressed by My Name Is Red .

Overall: 4.2 (out of 5.0) This book was more difficult than expected and I suspect it was largely wasted on me, but even I can see the tremendous writing skill. The balance of voices is extraordinary and, even though the mystery is a much smaller element than I wanted, the diversions were thoughtfully and beautifully phrased (if not well-paced).

Translation: Help me find another book by Pamuk. He’s plainly worth reading, but I’m not sure this was the one for me.

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Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Literature › Analysis of Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red

Analysis of Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on August 2, 2023

My Name Is Red , the recipient of the International Impac Dublin Literary Award in 2003, is perhaps the most celebrated book by the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk (1952– ), who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2006. The novel, which is superficially a murder mystery, details the artistic and philosophical conflicts that surround Ottoman miniaturist painters during the 16th century.

Pamuk tells his story through a number of short chapters spoken in the voices of different narrators that range from inanimate objects drawn on paper to the central characters (including Enishte, a miniaturist commissioned by the sultan to produce a secret book of illustrations; his daughter Shekure; and his nephew Black, who returns from exile in the East). The different voices, and the novel itself, further the contemporary Turkish debate over the impact of Western culture as Turkey seeks to create a coherent identity for its multicultural populace. In addition to the main story, the reader is presented with a subplot: The rekindling of the childhood love between Black and Shekure provides a glimpse of a woman’s life in the Ottoman Empire. Well aware of Enishte’s declining reputation and popularity among fellow miniaturists due to the secret book, Black takes it upon himself to protect himself and his daughter. In this way he hopes to win Shekure’s heart and convince her of a speedy divorce from her estranged husband in order for him to marry her.

Orhan Pamuk Via Border Kitchen

The first narrative belongs to the corpse of a miniaturist in the Ottoman court, Elegant Efendi, who reveals that his death is a result of religious conspiracy designed to suppress the artistic innovations introduced from the West. Both Elegant and Enishte have been attentive to the new forms of painting in the West. In their attempts to incorporate Western portraiture into their traditional miniatures, they anger extremists who perceive the West as a threat to the preservation of Ottoman culture.

By foregrounding the discrepancy between the Eastern and Western modes of seeing and representing, Pamuk sets the stage for a discussion of the conflicts that have influenced the relationship between East and West. He also observes how different artistic visions can become political matters in a society struggling to find its identity amid tensions between liberals and conservatives. While progressive miniaturists are enthusiastic about incorporating Western techniques, the fundamentalists condemn the West’s emphasis on originality, individual style, and autonomous subject matter, fearing that such depictions are sacrilegious.

A mouthpiece for extreme conservatism, the murderer, whose voice we hear without learning his identity, maintains that miniature painting should stick to the basic philosophical principles of Islamic decorum. In Islam, painting is deemed blasphemous, for the Koran explicitly prohibits pictorial representations to avoid idolatry. Within strict parameters, Muslim artists work with sophisticated forms of gilding, ornamentation, and miniature—the only acceptable forms of representational art. The art of miniature compels the artist to represent visually the symbolic rather than individual nature of objects, adopting an elevated viewpoint to emulate the way Allah sees the world from above. Any challenge to these principles, according to the murderer, is an affront to religion. The characters who remain open to change, like Enishte and Elegant, also consider themselves devout Muslims, but they explain that their effort to embrace foreign innovations does not reflect a desire to become Westernized; rather, they believe that artistic traditions are better served by incorporating difference.

The separation between the affairs of the state and religion, in this and other novels, is crucial for Pamuk, who believes that religion is a private practice that should therefore have no weight in political discussions. Pamuk identifies secularism as a condition of modernity. The insider/outsider binary of religion, he observes, often threatens the fundamental principles of a multicultural society.

My Name Is Red is a testament to the crisis of identity that the Ottomans suffered and bequeathed to modern Turkey. Pamuk indicates the futility of the fundamentalist position, underlining that cultural exchange should not be equated with loss of identity; on the contrary, just as the Ottoman miniaturists have borrowed from the masters of Herat in the East to perfect their techniques, they should also recognize the value in innovations from the West. Liberal artists such as Elegant and Enishte understand the value of harmonizing different ways of seeing. For this reason, Enishte’s acceptance of the sultan’s commission is not just an artistic endeavor, but a political act that advocates a more productive relationship between East and West, and Elegant’s murder is a warning about the extremes to which some will go to prevent that new relationship from taking root.

Analysis of Orhan Pamuk’s The Black Book

BIBLIOGRAPHY Freeman, John. “In Snow, an Apolitical Poet Mirrors Apolitical Pamuk.” Village Voice, 17 August 2004. Pamuk, Orhan. “The Anger of the Damned.” New York Review of Books 18. 15 November 2001. ———. The Black Book. Translated by Güneli Gün. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1996. ———. “Freedom to Write.” New York Review of Books, 25 May 2006. ———. Istanbul: Memories of a City. Translated by Maureen Freely. London: Faber and Faber, 2005.

Review of My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk

My Name Is Red

by Orhan Pamuk

This is the second work of historical fiction I’ve read in a month that has a colour in its title and features art as a significant component of its story. The other, Sacré Bleu , was an irreverent “comedy d’art” by Christopher Moore. My Name is Red definitely isn’t that. Good thing I like to read widely!

My Name is Red opens with the voice of a dead man. Elegant Effendi describes the sensations of knowing he is dead, of his spirit decoupling from his body. He hopes his murderer will be found and brought to justice (the more creative the better). From there, Orhan Pamuk goes on to hop perspectives every chapter, weaving a story of magic and mystery in sixteenth-century Istanbul. Centred around a workshop of miniaturists who are working on a somewhat controversial book for the Sultan, My Name is Red dips into some of the questions raised in the sixteenth century as the Ottoman Empire continued to coexist uneasily next to the Christian nations of Western Europe. The time is the past and the setting is, as always, that battleground between change and tradition.

This book reminds me a lot of The Name of the Rose . Superficially they have so many similarities: both are translations, one from Turkish and one from Italian. Both are set in the past and involve a murder mystery. Both are written in a style that is, if not challenging, then definitely demanding of one’s full attention. Beyond the surface, though, the striking similarities continue: both of these novels are about the tension between different schools of thought. In The Name of the Rose it’s the growing chasm between science and religion, between the empirical principles of Bacon and Occam and the spiritual communion of the Franciscans and Dominicans. In My Name is Red it’s the clash between the older, traditional ways of depicting people in Islamic art and the new style imported from Venice—a style that, some worry, comes too close to the real thing. And in both these novels, the murders are inextricably linked to these questions of style, change, and tradition.

I can see why many people express frustration over this book’s narration. It’s not the easiest book to read. Translated from Turkish, My Name is Red doesn’t always have the same kind of unity and coherence that a novel originally written in English might have. Moreover, Pamuk has very little time for dialogue. Most of the book is either description or introspection from the narrator to the reader. My Name is Red reminds me of a stage play. In each scene, several actors would be in tableaux while the narrator of the scene delivers an extensive monologue. Then, with a flourish, he or she triggers the action, the other actors unfreeze, and the plot drags forward for a few minutes before the narrator re-assumes control. Although i understand why some people see the narrators as flat, I thought the moments when they comment on their actions, their drawings or letter-writing or courting, were quite confessional. Just the character and I in a musty, dark room, as the character hurriedly scribbles out the journal of their last days. One of them is a murderer ….

Thanks to the way Pamuk structures the novel, attempting to discover the identity of the murderer is half the fun. The murderer narrates both as himself and as his ordinary miniaturist alter ego, always careful never to reveal anything about his actions as a miniaturist that would shed light on his identity. So, for example, Pamuk has each of the three suspect miniaturists tell three parables labelled Aliph, Bet, Djim, allowing the murderer to refer to these stories without revealing which miniaturist he is. But the clues are there, getting louder as the novel approaches the climax and the identity of the murderer is revealed. I was sure it was one miniaturist pretty early on—and I was wrong. So it goes.

The miniaturists’ chapters are also very interesting looks at the ongoing debate regarding Islamic versus Western art. Is it sacrilege to paint in the Frankish style? What is style, anyway? Is it sacrilege to have one’s own style, rather than labouring to faithfully reproduce the old pieces as flawlessly as possible? True flawlessness, of course, just like true creativity, is the domain of Allah and not something a mere human artist could achieve. These questions spill over beyond the miniaturists’ chapters, however, and into the concurrent love story between Shekure and Black and the murder mystery itself. The ideas Pamuk juggles are particularly appropriate to the context of the story, but they are timeless and still relevant today.

Above all else, Pamuk manages to convey how personal the process of making and rendering art can be. Making art is a thoughtful, time-consuming activity that can be as emotionally draining as it is physically. The crises of faith experienced in My Name is Red are all too real. They happen as a result of the expression of self necessary for art to be possible: what you make, and how you make it, says something about yourself and your convictions, what you believe and the values you hold dear. To set that down on paper, in ink, in stone, on canvas, for others to view and discuss and rip apart … it’s a little terrifying. Worse still, in the act of such creation, you begin to think about these beliefs and sometimes even question them—or, through the influence of other creators, you realize that there are other sets of beliefs out there. Which ones are true, better, practical, enriching, etc.? Does it even matter?

So, you know, art is serious business. Serious enough in this case that someone was willing to kill Elegant Effendi for questioning if what they were doing was compatible with the wishes of Allah. On one hand, such actions seem like the same old, same old internecine and destructive effects of organized religion—but that would be a disingenuous and uncharitable evaluation. For on the other hand, the conflict in My Name is Red is less about religion and more about personal values that hinge upon the intersection of history, politics, faith, and art.

It took me a while to read My Name is Red , partly because I did so while moving to another country and partly because of its heavily stylized narration. But read it I did. While it did not necessarily excite me or enthrall me in the same way The Name of the Rose did, its meditations on the nature of art and artistry, style and sacrilege and sacrifice, are still interesting. It is a deep and thoughtful book; as long as you are willing to spend the time and effort on it, it is also a rewarding one.

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MY NAME IS RED

by Orhan Pamuk & translated by Erdag Göknar ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 6, 2001

A rich feast of ideas, images, and lore.

Acclaimed Turkish writer Pamuk ( The New Life , 1997, etc.) investigates two brutal murders—and offers a whimsical but provocative exploration of the nature of art in an Islamic society.

My Name is Red speaks in many voices, some more predominant than others. A dog, a tree, and a horse as well as Death, Satan, and a corpse all make eloquent contributions to the narrative, but center stage are Black the clerk, the Murderer, Esther the Jewish matchmaker, and Shekure, recently married to Black. The setting is Istanbul in the late 1500s—a period of time that saw the Ottoman Empire at its height but increasingly challenged by the innovative West. Prohibited by the Koran to paint realistic likenesses, the Islamic miniaturists of Istanbul have for centuries done stylized pictures of people, plants, and horses. Their informing belief has been that art should reflect what Allah sees from above, but when a new Sultan commissions a book from noted artist Enishte Effendi that will include a portrait of the Sultan in the Western style, reactionary artists and mullahs become alarmed. After a noted engraver and Enishte are found murdered, the Sultan demands the killer be found or all the miniaturists will be put to death. Black, Enishte’s nephew, becomes involved in the investigation. He consults with the famous miniaturist Master Osman, who senses that an era is ending and blinds himself, as well as with the artists working on the book with his late uncle Enishte. With nicknames like Butterfly, Stork, and Olive, these artists reminisce and discuss the difference between Western and Islamic art while proclaiming their innocence. Threatened with torture by the Sultan, Black finally gets his man—not to mention the respect of his new bride.

Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2001

ISBN: 0-375-40695-6

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2001

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Absolutely enthralling. Read it.

A young Irish couple gets together, splits up, gets together, splits up—sorry, can't tell you how it ends!

Irish writer Rooney has made a trans-Atlantic splash since publishing her first novel, Conversations With Friends , in 2017. Her second has already won the Costa Novel Award, among other honors, since it was published in Ireland and Britain last year. In outline it's a simple story, but Rooney tells it with bravura intelligence, wit, and delicacy. Connell Waldron and Marianne Sheridan are classmates in the small Irish town of Carricklea, where his mother works for her family as a cleaner. It's 2011, after the financial crisis, which hovers around the edges of the book like a ghost. Connell is popular in school, good at soccer, and nice; Marianne is strange and friendless. They're the smartest kids in their class, and they forge an intimacy when Connell picks his mother up from Marianne's house. Soon they're having sex, but Connell doesn't want anyone to know and Marianne doesn't mind; either she really doesn't care, or it's all she thinks she deserves. Or both. Though one time when she's forced into a social situation with some of their classmates, she briefly fantasizes about what would happen if she revealed their connection: "How much terrifying and bewildering status would accrue to her in this one moment, how destabilising it would be, how destructive." When they both move to Dublin for Trinity College, their positions are swapped: Marianne now seems electric and in-demand while Connell feels adrift in this unfamiliar environment. Rooney's genius lies in her ability to track her characters' subtle shifts in power, both within themselves and in relation to each other, and the ways they do and don't know each other; they both feel most like themselves when they're together, but they still have disastrous failures of communication. "Sorry about last night," Marianne says to Connell in February 2012. Then Rooney elaborates: "She tries to pronounce this in a way that communicates several things: apology, painful embarrassment, some additional pained embarrassment that serves to ironise and dilute the painful kind, a sense that she knows she will be forgiven or is already, a desire not to 'make a big deal.' " Then: "Forget about it, he says." Rooney precisely articulates everything that's going on below the surface; there's humor and insight here as well as the pleasure of getting to know two prickly, complicated people as they try to figure out who they are and who they want to become.

Pub Date: April 16, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-984-82217-8

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Hogarth

Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019

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by Sally Rooney

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SEEN & HEARD

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THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD

by Claire Lombardo ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 25, 2019

Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...

Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.

Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.

Pub Date: June 25, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2

Page Count: 544

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

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My Name is Red

Orhan pamuk, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Elegant has been murdered, and his corpse lies undiscovered at the bottom of a well. Speaking from the afterlife, he hopes that his body is found soon and that the murderer is captured. Meanwhile, Black has returned to Istanbul after 12 years away. Before he left, Black fell in love with his cousin, Shekure , and he has now been summoned home by Shekure’s father (and Black’s uncle) Enishte . Enishte wants Black to work on a secret book commissioned by the Sultan and illustrated by the three master miniaturists, Butterfly , Stork , and Olive .

The murderer reflects on his difficulty coming to terms with the fact that he has taken someone’s life. He has started frequenting a coffeehouse where a storyteller entertains the audience by impersonating different characters; the murderer laughs at the storyteller’s impression of a dog, and he admits that he killed Elegant because Elegant was threatening to tell everyone about the secret book.

Enishte originally sent Black away after learning that he had fallen in love with Shekure, but he is now pleased with the way that Black has matured during his time in exile. He tells Black about a trip he took to Venice, during which he was astonished (and frightened) by the new realist style of European painting. Enishte introduces Black to Shekure’s six-year-old son Orhan , who then overhears Enishte telling Black about the death of Elegant, whom people suspect was murdered. As Black leaves Enishte’s house, Esther , a Jewish clothier, gives him a letter from Shekure. Riding away on his horse, Black catches a glimpse of Shekure at her window. Shekure admires Black’s handsomeness, but feels conflicted, as she is still technically married to a soldier who never returned from war. Shekure previously lived with her husband’s father and his brother, Hasan , but left when Hasan tried to rape her.

The next chapter is narrated by an illustration of a tree , who declares that it is lonely because it fell out of the book of which it was supposed to be a part. Meanwhile, Black goes to see Master Osman , the Head Illuminator, and he is given a tour of the Royal Workshop. Osman is suspicious of Black, as Enishte is Osman’s archrival. Black then makes individual visits to Butterfly, Stork, and Olive, who each tell Black three different parables about style and signature.

Black gives Esther a letter for Shekure, but before bringing it to Shekure, Esther shows it to Hasan, who writes his own letter. After receiving both letters, Shekure confesses that she is confused about whom to marry. Enishte goes to Elegant’s funeral, where Butterfly tells him that he believes Olive and Stork are behind Elegant’s death. The murderer admits that he put on a big show of grief at the funeral and that he does feel a genuine sense of torment about killing Elegant.

The storyteller’s next narrative is told from the perspective of a gold counterfeit coin , who argues that the people of Istanbul are all obsessed with money. Enishte explains to Black that the final illustration in the secret book will be a portrait of the Sultan, although Enishte is having trouble finishing it. The murderer sees Black leaving Enishte’s house and realizes that Black intends to marry Shekure, which fills the murderer with furious jealousy.

After Esther shows Hasan more letters between Black and Shekure, Hasan writes his own letter to Shekure, threatening to force her to return to his father’s house. Shekure and Black meet at a house that formerly belonged to a Jewish man who was hanged. They kiss and begin to have sex, but Shekure insists that they stop and she makes Black agree to a list of demands in preparation for their marriage.

While Shekure and Black are out, the murderer goes to Enishte’s house and they have a long conversation about art, religion, sin, and the secret book. Eventually, the murderer tells Enishte that it was he who murdered Elegant. They continue their discussion, but it becomes clear to both of them that the murderer intends to kill Enishte. The murderer smashes a Mongolian inkpot over Enishte’s head, and Enishte cries out in agony before dying. His soul is carried to the heavens in the palm of the Angel Azrael.

Shekure walks home in the snow , discovers Enishte’s dead body, and hides the body while pretending to her two sons that Enishte is merely sick. At the coffeehouse, the storyteller speaks from the perspective of the color red , reflecting on the impossibility of explaining color to someone who has never seen it.

In the morning, Shekure meets Black and makes a plan to legally authorize her widowhood so that they can marry. Black bribes an imam to issue the certificate of widowhood and arranges for the imam to officiate their marriage. The wedding takes place around Enishte’s body, with Shekure and Black managing to convince the imam and guests that Enishte is alive and providing his consent from his deathbed. That night, Hasan comes to Enishte’s house and threatens to force Shekure to come back to his father’s house. In the morning, Shekure tells the children that Enishte has just died; her eldest son, Shevket , doesn’t believe her, claiming that he knows Enishte died the previous night.

Black goes to the palace to bring news of Enishte’s death to the Sultan, who is deeply saddened. Black explains that the murderer stole the final illustration for the book, adding that Enishte believed that Elegant was murdered by one of the three master miniaturists and that Enishte’s and Elegant’s murderer is likely the same person.

Enishte is pleased by his funeral, which he witnesses from the afterlife. He explains that after dying he experienced a dazzling array of vivid colors, a collapse of time and space into a single plane, and a conversation in which Allah reassured him about his use of the European style, stating: “East and West belong to me.” After Enishte’s funeral, Esther visits Elegant’s widow, Kabilye , who shows her a drawing of horses that was found on Elegant’s dead body. Kabilye insists that Elegant did not create the drawing himself.

Black is summoned to the palace, where his head is put in a vice. However, just as the torture begins Master Osman interrupts and explains that the Sultan has given them three days in which to figure out who killed Enishte. Black and Osman discuss the particular characteristics of each of the miniaturists, and Osman states that he believes Stork is the murderer. One of the palace officials shows them the horse illustration found on Elegant’s dead body, and they resolve to hold a pretend horse-drawing competition in order to figure out which miniaturist drew the horses, and thus which one is the murderer.

Olive, Butterfly, and Stork each draw horses for the competition, and the murderer asks the reader if they were able to identify him through his drawing. He then describes going to the coffeehouse, where he tells two stories. As he is about to tell a third, he is cut off by the storyteller, who impersonates Satan and claims that evil and free will are important parts of the world and that Allah does not care about minor sins.

Having reached a dead end with the competition, Black goes to the palace, where Master Osman obtains the Sultan’s permission to look through the Royal Treasury for clues that will lead to the murderer. Black and Osman spend hours searching through the books in the treasury and having occasional conversations about the history and future of the miniaturist tradition. Eventually, Black falls asleep, and Master Osman happens upon the needle that Bihzad used both to paint and, eventually, to blind himself. Osman pierces his own eyes with the same needle, and his vision begins to slip away.

When Black is awake again, he and Osman discuss the identity of the murderer; Osman insists that it is Stork. Black goes home in a joyful mood, but he finds that Shekure and the boys are not there. He learns that they are at Hasan’s house and he brings a gang of men from the neighborhood to help him take Shekure back. After some confusion, Hasan’s father permits Shekure and the children to leave. At this moment, the Erzurumis descend on the coffeehouse; Black sends Shekure home and promises to join her soon.

At the coffeehouse, the storyteller tells of his desire to be a woman and he sings a poem about conflicted identity. When the Erzurumis raid the coffeehouse, they kill the storyteller, and Black and Butterfly go to Butterfly’s house. Black interrogates Butterfly and Butterfly pins him to the ground in an aggressive, erotic gesture. Butterfly says he believes Stork is the murderer, and he and Black set off for Stork’s house.

Once there, Stork tells them that Olive drew the horse illustration found on Enishte’s dead body. He adds that Olive will be at the abandoned dervish lodge, which is indeed where they find him. Olive denies drawing the horses. Stork and Black search for the book’s final illustration but find nothing. Olive begins to cry, and it is now clear to everyone present that he is the murderer. He suggests that the miniaturists must now kill Master Osman, and Black puts a knife to Olive’s throat, demanding to know the location of the final illustration. There is a scuffle during which the murderer is blinded. He confesses to both murders and tells the others that there is only once chance to escape the death of the miniaturist tradition—move to India, where the Sultan of Hindustan is gathering the best miniaturists for his royal workshop.

Olive attempts to kill Black but he misses, and then he runs away through the streets of Istanbul and encounters Hasan, who—mistaking Olive for one of Black’s allies—cuts off his head.

In the final chapter, Shekure tells of the fates of the characters after the main narrative ends. She explains that she told the story to Orhan and showed him the letters she exchanged with Hasan and Black, warning the reader that Orhan may not tell the exact truth but that this is in service of creating “a delightful and convincing story.”

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My Name Is Red Kindle Edition

** ORDER NIGHTS OF PLAGUE, THE NEW NOVEL FROM ORHAN PAMUK ** Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature Winner of the International IMPAC Dublin Award 'Wonderful' The Spectator 'Magnificent' Observer 'Sumptuous' New Yorker 'Unforgettable' Guardian My Name is Red is an unforgettable murder mystery, set amid the splendour of sixteenth century Istanbul, from the Nobel prizewinning author In the late 1590s, the Sultan secretly commissions a great book: a celebration of his life and his empire, to be illuminated by the best artists of the day - in the European manner. At a time of violent fundamentalism, however, this is a dangerous proposition. Even the illustrious circle of artists are not allowed to know for whom they are working. But when one of the miniaturists is murdered, their Master has to seek outside help. Did the dead painter fall victim to professional rivalry, romantic jealousy or religious terror? With the Sultan demanding an answer within three days, perhaps the clue lies somewhere in the half-finished pictures . . . Orhan Pamuk is one of the world's leading contemporary novelists and in My Name is Red, he fashioned an unforgettable tale of suspense, and an artful meditation on love and deception.

Print length 434 pages
Language English
Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
Publisher Faber & Faber
Publication date August 5, 2011
File size 3000 KB
Page Flip Enabled
Word Wise Enabled
Enhanced typesetting Enabled
See all details

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Editorial Reviews

From publishers weekly, from library journal, from booklist, from the inside flap, from the back cover, about the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., from audiofile, product details.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B005GYYXS0
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Faber & Faber; Open Market - Airside ed edition (August 5, 2011)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 5, 2011
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 3000 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 434 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0375706852
#107 in Commercial Illustration
#175 in History of Turkey & the Ottoman empire
#809 in Calligraphy Guides

About the authors

Orhan pamuk.

Orhan Pamuk, described as 'one of the freshest, most original voices in contemporary fiction' (Independent on Sunday), is the author of many books, including The White Castle, The Black Book and The New Life. In 2003 he won the International IMPAC Award for My Name is Red, and in 2004 Faber published the translation of his novel Snow, which The Times described as 'a novel of profound relevance to the present moment'. His most recent book was Istanbul, described by Jan Morris as 'irresistibly seductive'. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. He lives in Istanbul.

Photo by David Shankbone (Orhan Pamuk discusses his new book about love) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Erdağ M. Göknar

Erdağ Göknar is Associate Professor of Turkish and Middle East Studies at Duke University and an award-winning translator. His translation of Orhan Pamuk's historical novel MY NAME IS RED won the International Dublin Literary Award (2003), marking Pamuk's emergence as an author of world literature and contributing to his selection as Nobel laureate (2006). The best selling novel was reissued in 2010 as part of the Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics series. Göknar is also the translator of A.H. Tanpınar's iconic novel of Istanbul, A MIND AT PEACE, and Atiq Rahimi's anti-war novella set in Afghanistan, EARTH AND ASHES. His critical literary study, ORHAN PAMUK, SECULARISM, AND BLASPHEMY: THE POLITICS OF THE TURKISH NOVEL (Routledge 2013), argues that the productive tension between Turkish Islam and state secularism give Pamuk's work currency as world literature. Göknar's poetry collection, NOMADOLOGIES (Turtle Point 2017), engages themes of Turkish-American diaspora.

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WTOP Book Report: In ‘My Name Was Eden’ one twin vanished in the womb, while the other remained … until now

Terik King | [email protected]

May 26, 2024, 10:00 PM

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This story was written as part of the WTOP Book Report series written by Terik King. Read more of that coverage .

In her riveting debut novel, My Name Was Eden (HarperCollins) , UK-based author Eleanor Barker-White channels the profundity of life into art by telling the tale of a mother named Lucy, and her struggle after her teenage daughter, Eden, survives a near-fatal drowning incident and returns claiming to be Eli, the name reserved for Eden’s unborn twin who vanished during pregnancy.

As Barker-White told the WTOP Book Report, the seed of the story was rooted in her own experience with the real-life phenomenon of vanishing twin syndrome .

“When I was pregnant with my son, Ethan, he was a twin,” Barker-White explained. “At the first scan, there were two hearts beating, but at the next scan, about eight weeks later, they said one had vanished. I had to get my head around that, and I started wondering where the twin had gone … the fact that it had been absorbed by my surviving twin was just weird.”

But then, she continued, “I started (thinking about) what the effects could be if this twin came back. That was where the seed of it came from.”

When Eden emerges from the incident without a scratch, she soon begins asserting that her name is Eli — her unborn fraternal twin brother — unsettling her mother with a steady demeanor and strange new smile. Lucy’s husband, James, and their doctor dismiss her concerns, but Lucy remains convinced that the daughter she knew is gone.

The story’s emotional core centers around the complexities of the parent-child relationship and the impact of unresolved trauma.

“Lucy always hankered after the lost twin, especially because she never really had much of a relationship with Eden,” Barker-White noted.

The drowning incident serves as the catalyst for exposing deeper fissures in Lucy and James’ marriage, forcing them to confront past traumas and the strain on their relationship.

“They were butting heads from the beginning,” said Barker-White, “(James) just wanted his little girl back. But the mum quite enjoyed the fact that she had a second chance to become closer to her child.”

Asked if she and her husband experienced similar marital turbulence when they experienced vanishing twin syndrome personally, Barker-White laughed, “Yeah … obviously not to the same extent, because the twin never came back. (But) yes, it did expose differences between us and the way we dealt with things.”

Barker-White also drew from her professional background in family support work and family law courts.

“ I’ve gathered a lot of information about families and different types of family dynamics,” she said. “When a child comes along, it changes the dynamic, and I wanted to explore that.”

In addition to Lucy, My Name Was Eden is told from the additional perspective of Charlie, Eden’s teenage best friend, “so that she could expose how different Eli is than Eden was previously.”

The difference in perspectives between narrators brings the reader to a tense uncertainty: Is any of this even happening? Is this the stunt of a troubled teenager? Or is this all occurring inside the mind of a troubled and traumatized mother?

“There are two ways of looking at it, effectively,” Barker-White teased. “So I wanted it to be a little ambiguous; a bit like when you look at a piece of art in a gallery, (and) you might see something, and then somebody else might come along and see the piece differently.”

Barker-White said My Name Was Eden has resonated with early readers, including those with personal connections to twins. “I’ve had a lot of people with twins … it’s as though they’re in this club … and they really, really enjoy it.” said Barker-White.

“Twins are often seen as something out of the ordinary, a blessing, so yeah it’s all been really great feedback which I’m very grateful for.”

Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here .

Terik King is an Associate Producer for WTOP. Before joining WTOP in 2022 he held roles producing podcasts, unscripted television and content for MTV, the NFL and independent documentary production companies.

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‘cocomelon’ and ‘blippi’ producer moonbug entertainment ups courtney holt to managing director, americas, as andy yeatman exits, skydance sweetens offer for paramount global.

By Jill Goldsmith , Anthony D'Alessandro

David Ellison ‘s Skydance has sweetened its offer to acquire Paramount Global, Deadline has learned, in an attempt to make it more palatable to the company’s Class B stockholders after they trashed the outlines of a previous deal and threatened to sue.

Ellison’s original offer was to buy out Par’s controlling shareholder Shari Redstone for a significant premium, resulting in a windfall for her, and then merge Skydance into Paramount keeping the combined company public. Stockholders wanted to be bought out at a premium as well.

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The parameters of the revised bid couldn’t be learned immediately but Deadline understands that Skydance is putting more money in and restructuring the deal to make it more palatable to the Class B folks.

As the Skydance exclusive talks ended with no deal, Sony jumped in for a $26 billion cash bid with private equity giant Apollo, which was later downsized in some fashion as Sony signed a non-disclosure agreement with Par about two weeks ago that would let SPE access Par’s books and talks to start in earnest. Those conversations were not exclusive, however, and Skydance remained very much in the mix, continuing to talk with Par as well.

The issue for Sony is not shareholders but regulators. Foreign ownership rules likely prevent Sony from owning CBS broadcast assets, which is probably why its offer became more targeted. But it might not be a cakewalk to merge two major studios either. Skydance is safer, more certain on the regulatory front and wouldn’t require a prolonged review amid possible opposition that can drag a deal out and sometimes end without one.

Par hasn’t said whether the three had continued to serve actively on the committee after their pending departures were announced, or what the committee composition is now or will be after the meeting where shareholders vote for directors among other issues on the agenda and can ask questions. There’s speculation the committee maybe needed to wrap up and present options by the annual meeting but that may not be the case. The committee in any case is just there for a recommendation, with Redstone the decider and, some feel, a wildcard.

Says one source with knowledge of the dealings, “At the end of the day, whatever the committee recommends to Shari, it’s up to her to decide. A deal’s not a deal without her.”

Hollywood insiders favor a Skydance deal over a Sony/Apollo takeover of Paramount Global. The reduction of a major studio strikes fear throughout the exhibition sector that fewer event films would exist in the long run, the sector currently weathering the aftermath of Covid, two strikes and a Disney-Fox merger which has reduced the supply of movies at multiplexes.

Skydance’s last offer included a sweetened $3 billion cash injection — up by at least $1 billion contemplated previously. What’s key as a priority is Paramount holding enough cash on its balance sheet for an investment grade status with big ratings agencies. It included some premium sweetener for a percentage of non-voting Class B shares. Redstone would take an unspecified haircut compared with the initial offer terms where Skydance had proposed buying out Redstone’s controlling Class A voting shares and some other assets for about $2 billion.

Paramount’s all stock acquisition of Skydance, planned as a second step in the transaction, valued the Ellison studio at about $5 billion, which also irked investors who called it too high and said it would dilute their holdings. It’s not clear if that part of the offer has changed.

Par shares are up 2% to about $12.

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What’s new on Hulu in June 2024 and what’s leaving soon

F X is going to make this summer a great time to be a Hulu subscriber, especially in June. The only bad news is that one of the best shows on TV, The Bear , won’t be arriving until near the end of the month. In the meantime, FX and Hulu are premiering the new drama Clipped , which chronicles the downfall of Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling, on June 4.

As for the new movies that are kicking off the month, there are some surprising additions including The Batman and Joker , as well as the return of Fight Club , Office Space , and the very un-Disney-like Borat .

Keep reading for our roundup of everything coming to Hulu in June 2024 and what’s leaving at the end of the month. Our picks for June are in bold.

Since you’re a Hulu fan, be sure to check out the Disney Bundle , which will get you Disney+, ESPN+, and a basic Hulu subscription for just $14 a month. You’re basically getting three streaming services for the price of two — it’s tough to turn that down. And if you want an even better deal on live TV, you’ll need to make a decision between YouTube TV and Hulu With Live TV .

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Caleb Carr, Author of Dark Histories, Dies at 68

His own dark history prompted him to write about and investigate the roots of violence, notably in his best-selling novel “The Alienist.”

A photo of a man in a blazer, sweater vest, shirt and tie. He has a gray beard, shoulder-length hair and rimless glasses, and sits on a deck in a chair draped in a fur. He holds a sword on his shoulder and looks off camera.

By Penelope Green

Caleb Carr, a military historian and author whose experience of childhood abuse drove him to explore the roots of violence — most famously in his 1994 best seller, “The Alienist,” a period thriller about the hunt for a serial killer in 19th-century Manhattan — died on Thursday at his home in Cherry Plain, N.Y. He was 68.

The cause was cancer, his brother Ethan Carr said.

Mr. Carr was 39 when he published “The Alienist,” an atmospheric detective story about a child psychiatrist — or an alienist, as those who studied the mind were called in the 1890s — who investigates the murders of young male prostitutes by using forensic psychiatry, which was an unorthodox method at the time.

Mr. Carr had first pitched the book as nonfiction; it wasn’t, but it read that way because of the exhaustive research he did into the period. He rendered the dank horrors of Manhattan’s tenement life, its sadistic gangs and the seedy brothels that were peddling children, as well as the city’s lush hubs of power, like Delmonico’s restaurant. And he peopled his novel with historical figures like Theodore Roosevelt, who was New York’s reforming police commissioner before his years in the White House. Even Jacob Riis had a cameo.

Up to that point, Mr. Carr had been writing, with modest success, on military matters. He had contributed articles to The Quarterly Journal of Military History, and he had written, with James Chace, a book about national security and, on his own, a well-received biography of an American soldier of fortune who became a Chinese military hero in the mid-19th century.

Mr. Carr had also been a regular contributor to the letters page of The New York Times; he notably once chastised Henry Kissinger for what Mr. Carr characterized as his outdated theories of international diplomacy. He was 19 at the time.

“The Alienist” was an immediate hit and earned glowing reviews. Even before it was published, the movie rights were snapped up by the producer Scott Rudin for half a million dollars. (The paperback rights sold for more than a million.)

“You can practically hear the clip-clop of horses’ hooves echoing down old Broadway,” Christopher Lehmann-Haupt wrote in his review in The Times . “You can taste the good food at Delmonico’s. You can smell the fear in the air.”

Magazine writers were captivated by Mr. Carr’s downtown cool — he lived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, had been in a local punk band, wore black high-top sneakers and had shoulder-length hair — and by his literary provenance. His father was Lucien Carr, a journalist who was muse to and best friends with Beat royalty: the writers Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. Beautiful and charismatic as a young man, “Lou was the glue,” Ginsberg once said, that held the group together.

The elder Mr. Carr was also an alcoholic, and Caleb grew up in bohemian chaos. The Carr household was the scene of drunken revelries, and much worse. Mr. Carr raged at his wife and three sons. But he directed his most terrifying outbursts at Caleb, his middle child, whom he singled out for physical abuse.

Caleb’s parents divorced when he was 8. But the beatings continued for years.

“There’s no question that I have a lifelong fascination with violence,” Caleb Carr told Stephen Dubner of New York magazine in 1994 , just before “The Alienist” was published, explaining not just the engine for the book but why he was drawn to military history. “Part of it was a desire to find violence that was, in the first place, directed toward some purposeful end, and second, governed by a definable ethical code. And I think it’s fairly obvious why I would want to do that.”

Lucien Carr had also been abused. Growing up in St. Louis, he was sexually molested by his Boy Scout master, a man named David Kammerer who followed him to the East Coast, where Lucien entered Columbia University and met Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs. One drunken night in 1944, Mr. Carr killed his longtime predator in Riverside Park, stabbing him with his Boy Scout knife and rolling him into the Hudson River. Kerouac helped him dispose of the knife. Lucien turned himself in the next day and served two years for manslaughter in a reformatory.

The killing was a cause célèbre, and became a kind of origin story for the history of the Beats . Kerouac and Burroughs rendered it in purple prose in a novel they archly titled “And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks,” which was rejected by publishers and then mired in legalities before finally being published in 2008, when all the principals were dead. (It was panned by Michiko Kakutani in The Times.) In 2013, it was the subject of a film, “Kill Your Darlings,” starring Daniel Radcliffe as Allen Ginsberg.

Caleb Carr and his family found “Kill Your Darlings” more than flawed, taking issue with the film’s thesis that Lucien was a conflicted gay man in a repressive society — and that Kammerer was the victim and their relationship was consensual.

“My father fit perfectly ‘the cycle of abuse,’” Mr. Carr told an interviewer at the time . “Of all the terrible things that Kammerer did, perhaps the worst was to teach him this, to teach him that the most fundamental way to form bonds was through abuse.”

He added: “When I confronted him many years later about his extreme violence toward me, after I had entered therapy, he at length asked (after denying that such violence had occurred for as long as he could, then conceding it), ‘Doesn’t that mean that there’s a special bond between us?’ And I remember that my blood had never run quite that cold.”

Caleb Carr was born on Aug. 2, 1955, in Manhattan. His father, after being released from the reformatory, worked as a reporter and editor for United Press International, where he met Francesca von Hartz, a reporter. They married in 1952 and had three sons, Simon, Caleb and Ethan. After they divorced a decade later, Ms. von Hartz married John Speicher, an editor and novelist with three daughters. The couple and their six children moved to a loft on East 14th Street, a dangerous area in the late 1960s and ’70s. It was another chaotic household overseen by alcoholics, and the children often referred to themselves as “the dark Brady Bunch.”

Caleb attended Friends Seminary, a Quaker school in the East Village, where his interest in military history made him an outlier and a misfit. His high school transcript described him as “socially undesirable.” After graduating, he attended Kenyon College in Ohio and then New York University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree and studied military and diplomatic history.

In 1997, Mr. Carr published “The Angel of Darkness,” a sequel to “The Alienist.” It featured many of the same characters, who reunite to investigate the case of a missing child. It, too, was a best seller, “as winning a historical thriller” as its predecessor, The Times’s Mr. Lehmann-Haupt wrote .

Mr. Carr was the author of 11 books, including “The Italian Secretary” (2005), a Sherlock Holmes mystery commissioned by the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle; “Surrender, New York” (2016), a well-reviewed contemporary crime procedural that nonetheless sold poorly; and “Lessons of Terror: A History of Warfare Against Civilians” (2002), which he wrote in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Even in those pre-Twitter days, “Lessons of Terror” caused an internet ruckus. It was at once vociferously praised and bashed — and became a best seller, to boot — and Mr. Carr derided his critics on Amazon. Many challenged his contention that some “conventional” warfare — like General Sherman’s barbarism during the Civil War and Israel’s behavior toward the Palestinians — was equivalent to terrorism, a thesis that annoyed military historians , as well as The Times’s Ms. Kakutani .

What propelled Mr. Carr in all his work was the origins of violence, the mysteries of nature and nurture. In his own life, he was determined to end the cycle of his family’s dark legacy by not having children. That choice restricted his romantic life, and as he got older, he grew more solitary. When he bought 1,400 acres in Rensselaer County, N.Y., in 2000, and built himself a house near a ridge called Misery Mountain, he became even more so.

“I have a grim outlook on the world, and in particular on humanity,” he told Joyce Wadler of The Times in 2005 . “I spent years denying it, but I am very misanthropic. And I live alone on a mountain for a reason.”

His last book, published in April, was “My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-Wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me.” It’s both a memoir of his time there and a love story to the creature who was his most constant and sustaining companion during the last decades of his life.

“But how could you live for such a long time,” he said friends asked him, “alone on a mountain with just a cat?” He took umbrage at the phrase “just a cat.”

“It needs to be understood that, for Masha, I was always enough,” he wrote. “How I lived, what I chose to do, my very nature — all were good enough for her.”

Masha, like her human roommate, had suffered physical abuse at some point, and as Mr. Carr and his companion aged, their early horrors had devastating physical repercussions. Mr. Carr’s beatings had created scar tissue in his organs that led to other serious ailments. They were each diagnosed with cancer, but Masha died first.

In addition to his brother Ethan, Mr. Carr is survived by another brother, Simon; his stepsisters, Hilda, Jennifer and Christine Speicher; and his mother, now known as Francesca Cote. Lucien Carr died in 2005.

Despite the early hoopla, “The Alienist” never made it to the big screen. Producers wanted to turn it into a love story or otherwise alter Mr. Carr’s creation. But after decades of fits and starts, i t found a home on television , and in 2018 it was seen as a 10-episode mini-series on TNT. James Poniewozik of The Times called it “lush, moody, a bit stiff.” But it was mostly a success, reaching 50 million viewers and earning six Emmy Award nominations. (It won one, for special visual effects.)

“If I had known that nothing would have come out of this book other than the advance,” Mr. Carr said in 1994 as “The Alienist” was poised for publication, “I still would have written it exactly the same. But if you were to ask me to trade this book, this whole career and have my childhood be different, I probably would.”

An earlier version of this obituary misstated part of the name of the hamlet in New York State where Mr. Carr lived. It is Cherry Plain, not Cherry Plains.

How we handle corrections

Penelope Green is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk. More about Penelope Green

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