The Museum of Innocence

Pamuk, OrhanOrhan Pamuk is the author of many celebrated books of fiction, nonfiction, and photography. In 2003 he won the IMPAC prize for My Name is Red, and in 2006 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

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. In his romantic pursuit of Füsun over the next eight years, Kemal compulsively amasses a collection of objects that chronicles his lovelorn progress-a museum that is both a map of a society and of his heart.

The novel depicts a panoramic view of life in Istanbul as it chronicles this long, obsessive love affair; and Pamuk beautifully captures the identity crisis experienced by Istanbul's upper classes that find themselves caught between traditional and westernised ways of being. Orhan Pamuk's first novel since winning the Nobel Prize is a stirring love story and exploration of the nature of romance.

Pamuk built The Museum of Innocence 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 house opened to the public in 2012 in the Beyoglu district of Istanbul.

'Pamuk has created a work concerning romantic love worthy to stand in the company of Lolita, Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina.' --Financial Times

Diese ergreifende Geschichte unerfüllter, aber umso innigerer Liebe, beginnt im Jahre 1975 in Istanbul. Kemal, ein junger Mann aus der Oberschicht, steht kurz vor einer standesgemäßen Ehe. Da kreuzt die blutjunge und wunderschöne Fusun seinen Weg und zwischen ihnen entbrennt die Leidenschaft. Doch Kemal verlässt seine Verlobte nicht und so wendet sich Fusun einem anderen Mann zu und heiratet in ärmliche Verhältnisse. Kemal, sich seines Verlustes bewusst werdend, errichtet ihr zu Ehren aus Erinnerungsstücken das Museum der Unschuld, welches nicht nur ein Spiegel des Lebens von Fusun, sondern der Rituale und Gepflogenheiten der türkischen Gesellschaft darstellt.

The Museum of Innocence is a love story at once richly humorous and deeply tragic, from Orhan Pamuk, the bestselling author of Snow and My Name is Red