"My Name Is Red"

[fiefoe]

The book is set in 16th-century Istanbul. Some historical facts come as a surprise, ('this 52 day circumcision ceremony', 'in the pink dress she was forced to wear as a Jew'), but even more surprising are the bits that I'm actually not completely stranger to.

• It was rumored that Flemish and Venetian merchant ships were filled with chests of counterfeit coin.  ... the coins they'd been paid actually floated in the Golden Horn like the dried beans that fell from the vegetable-sellers pier.
• "The drinking of coffee is an absolute sin! Our Glorious prophet did not partake of coffee because he knew, it dulled the intellect, caused ulcers, hernia and sterility."
• Prophet Muhammad, who cut off a piece of his robe upon which a cat lay sleeping rather than wake the beast. By pointing out this affection shown to the cat,...  people have tried to intimate that the prophet himself disliked dogs.
• burned and tossed into the Tigris River by the soldiers of the Mongol Khan Hulagu
  

Art and murder are cozy bedfellows in this book.

__ [Murderer:] Try to discover who I am from my choice of words and colors, as attentive people like yourselves might examine footprints to catch a thief. This, in turn, brings us to the issue of "style," ..Does a miniaturist, ought a miniaturist, have his own personal style? A use of color, a voice all his own?
__ (About painting of Husrev's murder:) The indifference of the painting's beauty and of the world to your death, the fact of your being totally alone in death despite the presence of your wife, this is the inescapable meaning that strikes you.

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