When the Devil Tells the Story: Ekphrastic Detective Fiction in Orhan Pamuk's Novel <em>My Name is Red</em>

Abstract

The present article discusses Orhan Pamuk’s novel My Name is Red as a highly complex, multi-layered “whodunit,” based on Tzvetan Todorov’s typology of detective fiction. The detective story in the novel relies heavily on ekphrasis (the oral description of an object, image, or artwork), which plays an important role in the elucidation of the murder, offering crucial clues in the story of the investigation. The old Ottoman art of miniature painting plays an important role in the solving of the murder case, alongside the numerous religious and cultural ramifications stemming from the East-West divide present throughout the novel, yet not easily decoded by the Western reader. Even though Pamuk’s novel has been previously described as a “murder mystery,” Todorov’s classification ensures the subtype of detective fiction the novel falls into can be more precisely defined. Additionally, the ingenious use of ekphrasis and the highlighting of essential conflicts within the Ottoman traditions of miniature paintings uncover new aspects of text-to-image “translations” which had been previously ignored by literary criticism.