My Name is Red

Last week I went to Mongkok to have dinner with a few undergraduate classmates. I was early and walked into a bookshop. Note: Bookshop is rare in MK. I stumbled onto a book called My Name is Red, written by the 2006 winner of Nobel Prize in Literature Orhan Pamuk. I flipped a few pages and found it quite interesting. The story is set in Istanbul of the Ottoman period, and have a very vivid and colorful depiction of the city and lives of the people. The author himself is a native of modern Istanbul. The original is written in Turkish, and I was reading the English translation, of course. After I got home, I looked up amazon.com for readers' reviews. The book is described as offering a great insight into the Islamic philosophy and Arts.

I didn't have a Hongkong Bank credit card with which I could get a 30% discount for the book. (Well.. if I were in the US, I would buy a used one from amazon.com for a much cheaper price.) A friend of mine who attended the dinner had it, but the bookshop was closed when we finished our meal. My friend was so nice that he bought one for me on the other day and gave it to me yesterday.

I started the book this morning on my way to work, and a line on the first page impressed me a lot. It is a mutter from the spirit of a dead man, who turns out to be the main character, about his enlightenment in the world of death, "Before my birth there was infinite time, and after my death, inexhaustible time. I never thought of it before: I'd been living luminously between two eternities of darkness."

Right. We should be grateful for being alive and exposed to infinite possibilities.

So far the book is easy to follow and addictive for a Nobel winner's work. And it is a murder mystery too. Still, I need to focus to take in the details. I planned to read Harry Potter - the Order of the Phoenix again before the movie is on. But now it has to give way to the Red.

p.s. On the train I noticed a young man reading the same book but an older edition. He turned out to be waiting for the school bus with me in CU, and we were reading the same book next to each other. He was getting close to the end though.