This translation from Turkish is written as one of my favorite genres - art history fiction. Set in Istanbul of 1591, it tells the story of a group of miniaturists or artists that illustrate texts, full of details of the art and thinking behind the art of those days. It is also a mystery, as it starts out with a murder and it is written in a very interesting manner (there must be some name for this style), where each chapter furthers the story in the voice of a different character - well the eight or so main characters, plus the corpse, a dog, a horse, Satan, dervishes, the color red, etc.
Maybe the fault lay with the fact that I was listening to this, and I seem to do better with foreign names when I see then visually than hear them. Maybe that I am totally unfamiliar with all the stories and legends alluded to in the book. Maybe because I couldn't see the art the author was describing. (Don't I complain about this on all the art history novels?) But I wished the book was half as long. I finally checked it out from the library - originally to double check spellings of things, to flip back to something I hadn't understood, but then I couldn't take it anymore and I just read it till it was finished - faster and with the ability to skim when wanting to skip over something quickly and reread something I hadn't understood. The author is well reknown throughout Europe, winner of prizes, translated in many languages... or maybe I just wasn't intellectual enough for this book.
But not all is lost. I did get a sense of this part of the world - what, when, where WAS the Ottoman Empire? I did enjoy the stories of the apprentices coming to work for master minituarists. Coffee plays a role, considered decadent by some. Of course women have a rough time, but they actually did have the right to divorce - especially when their husband doesn't return home for years. It took me a while to catch on that the relationship between masters and apprentices wasn't all OK and that there was a lot of pedaphelia going on. One passage explained that if women walked around uncovered, men would walk around erect. And to take care of urges that couldn't be normally satisfied, they used prostitutes and young boys. Great :(
Interesting how much art development depended on the patron, in this case the Sultan. The next Sultan wasn't interested in art and illustrated texts weren't made in his time. Then there is the controversy between Muslim and "Frankish" (Europpean?) art, where in the latter individuality of the artist is encouraged, as is depiction of actual people, instead of copying old masters without variation.
The story? One of the artists is murdered at the very beginning, and we find out who it is at the very end. There is Master Osman and his studio of artists, where the best are called Butterfly, Olive and Stork. There is Enishte, Shekure's father, who has been commissioned by the Sultan to put together a unique book, and he uses all the best artists from Osman's studio. Then there is Black, who has been in love with Shekure since childhood, but who has been gone many years to war and the world. Shekure's husband has not been back from the war for four years and she has moved with her two boys back in with her father, avoiding her husbands brother. Black would like to marry her. At one point to determine which artist is the murdered, Osman requests to be allowed into the Sultan's treasure room to look at all the old books. This seems a ploy to give us a history and influences on all the books of the times. In the audio format I couldn't absorb much of this. Interesting, but not one I will recommend further.
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