Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Benim Adim Kirmizi


last night I finished reading the Arabic translation of "My Name is Red" by the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, the winner of Nobel Prize 2006. it took me something like 2 weeks because of the bad translation, so i could barely finish 10 pages daily in the first week!

but despite what i mentioned about the translation the book is not by any means a quick read. the multiple perspectives that come from the characters make you stumble sometime in learning points of view over the vast range of perspectives and through the narrow miniaturists world in the 16th century.

many things stopped me to think in this book, one of them was:

ولكنني باعتباري نقاشاً عجوزاً أعمى أعرف أن الله خلق الدنيا كما يريد رؤيتها طفل ذكي في السابعة من عمره. لأن الله خلق العالم لنرى أولاً. بعد ذلك أعطانا الكلمات لنتكلم ونشترك فيما نراه، ولكننا عملنا من الكلمات حكايات، واعتقدنا أن الرسوم تنقش من أجل هذه الحكايات، مع أن النقش هو بحث مباشر عن الهام الله ورؤية العالم كما يريد الله

some readers may feel bored reading this novel, I agree, but it's a mentally stimulating read and I liked it.

I advise you to read it ... if you know Turkish it would be better .. otherwise try the English translation because the Arabic was not strong.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, I read the English translation of this book, I really liked it.

It was a while back though I can't remember the details but I remember that it was different and made me think.

Anonymous said...

By the way, what page was it you quoted? I can look for the English equivalent in my book.

ozz said...

it's in page 115 in the Arabic so must be around in English ... it's in the chapter where one character called "Olive" speaks answering question made by "Qurra Efendi"

Rambling Hal said...

I'm reading it in English right now and really enjoying it. It made me go buy a couple more books by the same author. Very interesting!

7aki Fadi said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
7aki Fadi said...

I could not find it :(

But I read a paragraph of him explaining the punishment for bad deeds he saw in an illustrated book and I remembered a visit to the Royal Ontario museum where I saw an old Turkish illustrated copy of the bible ,I believe, and the art was so beautiful. I was excited because I just finished reading the book back then.