‘It was the happiest moment of my life, though I didn’t know it.’ So begins this exquisite book by Nobel Prize-winning Pamuk (author of My Name is Red), and a love affair that can only be played out surreptitiously, in the seamier quarters of Istanbul. Kemal is a young man from the fading bourgeoisie of Turkey about to marry into comfortable wealth, but his encounter with the stunning Füsun, a poor distant relative shamed out of Kemal’s family for competing in a beauty contest, creates a lasting emotional fissure. Pulled between his glittering circle and Füsun’s impoverished world, he begins to collect objects obsessively. An enchanting novel, seamlessly translated by writer Maureen Freely.
The Museum of Innocence - set in Istanbul between 1975 and today - tells the story of Kemal, the son of one of Istanbul's richest families, and of his obsessive love for a poor and distant relation, the beautiful Fusun, who is a shop-girl in a small boutique. The novel depicts a panoramic view of life in Istanbul as it chronicles this long, obsessive, love affair between Kemal and Fusun; and Pamuk beautifully captures the identity crisis experienced by Istanbul's upper classes who find themselves caught between traditional and westernised ways of being. For the past ten years, Pamuk has been setting up a museum in the house in which his hero's fictional family lived, to display Kemal's strange collection of objects associated with Fusun and their relationship. The museum will be called The Museum of Innocence and it opens in 2010.
Orhan Pamuk, is the author of many celebrated books, including The White Castle, Istanbul and Snow. In 2003 he won the International IMPAC Award for My Name is Red, and in 2006 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. His most recent novel, The Museum of Innocence, was an international bestseller, praised in the Guardian as 'an enthralling, immensely enjoyable piece of storytelling.' Orhan Pamuk lives in Istanbul.
