My Name Is Red

In the late 1590s, the Sultan secretly commissions a great book celebrating his life and empire, to be illuminated by the best artists of the day in the European manner. This is dangerous, since figurative art can be seen as an affront to Islam. When one of the miniaturists is murdered, their Master must seek outside help. Did the dead painter fall victim to professional rivalry, romantic jealousy or religious terror? At once a fiendishly devious mystery, a beguiling love story, and a brilliant symposium on the power of art, set in sixteenth-century Istanbul.