(from the bbc website)

Orhan Pamuk

Duration: 30 minutes
First broadcast: Sunday 02 May 2010

Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's most prominent writer and winner of the Nobel Prize for Fiction, joins James Naughtie and readers to discuss My Name is Red.

The novel is a complicated mixture of murder mystery, fairy tale and exploration of the medieval world of the Turkish miniaturist painter.

The novel begins - surreally - from the point of view of the murdered man; his body thrown down the bottom of a well, he waits for this death to be discovered. The story is then taken up by a myriad of characters, which include a coin and a horse, as well as the colour Red itself. They recount a chapter at least each - in fact this book has twenty narrators and yet, as James Naughtie and readers testify, it is a page-turner.

My Name is Red is the most popular of Pamuk's in the English speaking world, due he says to the whodunnit element, but also to the global appeal of the art.

Orhan Pamuk discloses how as a young man he longed to be a painter, and so as a successful writer, it was a natural progression to write about the joys of painting, and to explore how an artist feels as their hands move across the page.

His reputation as the funny man of his family is also in evidence. Despite his intellectual credentials, humour is an important tool for him. He says he doesn't like writing a serious book, and if the reader isn't smiling when he reads his work, then he feels guilty.

Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00s54tn

Aomame, I really love how you set up your signature showing the books you're currently reading. I should do that soon.

Oh thank you(I was always wondering if it makes the posts to long - that's why I sometimes leaves it off). I think it is also a way to share books without explicitly mention them.

that was a good listen, it was interesting (amongst many other things) to me to listen to Orhan speaking english.

Do you have the feeling that hearing him talking about My Name is Red and discussing it with the book club members is changing your relationship to it?

not particularly, but it's always fascinating to me to hear the artist as an adjunct to enjoying the art, an enhancement if you will. that interview was a wonderful window into the origins of the book and it was also great to hear the clubbers questions.

Interesting. It is different for me - I feel kind of closer to the book. Closer in the sense that I see more of the author than I did before I listened to the discussion. It could have to do with my situation though - I am at home and do not have overwhelmingly many social contacts because I am new in the area.