The Museum of Innocence
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
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4.2 • 13 Ratings
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- £7.49
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE
A deeply moving portrait of a torturous love affair that shows Istanbul in all its complex beauty.
'An enthralling, immensely enjoyable piece of storytelling.' The Guardian
'Intimate and nuanced . . . a classic, spacious love story.' The New York Review of Books
'A resounding confirmation that Orhan Pamuk is one of the great novelists of his generation.' Washington Post
Kamal lives a life of cosmopolitan glamour, exploring the restaurants and boutiques of Istanbul with his friends and fiancé. In the newly modern city, they pride themselves on their liberal attitudes and Western style.
A chance encounter with Fusun, a working-class shop-girl, begins a long, obsessive love affair, one that draws him deep into Istanbul's complex history, and uncovers the forces of class and gender that still control its inhabitants' lives.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Nobel laureate Pamuk's latest is a soaring, detailed and laborious mausoleum of love. During Istanbul's tumultuous 1970s, Kemal Bey, 30-year-old son of an upper-class family, walks readers through a lengthy catalogue of trivial objects, which, though seeming mundane, hold memories of his life's most intimate, irretrievable moments. The main focus of Kemal's peculiar collection of earrings, ticket stubs and drinking glasses is beloved F sun, his onetime paramour and longtime unrequited love. An 18-year-old virginal beauty, modest shopgirl and "poor distant relation," F sun enters Kemal's successful life just as he is engaged to Sibel, a "very special, very charming, very lovely girl." Though levelheaded Sibel provides Kemal compassionate relief from their social strata's rising tensions, it is the fleeting moments with fiery, childlike F sun that grant conflicted Kemal his "deepest peace." The poignant truth behind Kemal's obsession is that his "museum" provides a closeness with F sun he'll never regain. Though its incantatory middle suffers from too many indistinguishable quotidian encounters, this is a masterful work.
