The Museum of Innocence

Published in Turkey in September 2008, six years in the writing, this novel is already Orhan Pamuk's best-selling book ever in Turkey. The Museum of Innocence is a rich and humorous love story set in Istanbul between 1975 and today. It 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. At the start of the novel, 30 year-old Kemal is about to become engaged to Sibel, who comes from an upper class family like his own, while at the same time he is carrying on a secret love affair with 18-year-old Fusun. The novel depicts a panoramic view of Istanbul life as it chronicles this long love affair, the obsessive love story of Kemal and Fusun. Marriage, sexuality, sexual ethics, and the repression of women are the strong themes of the book, even as it evokes the happiness, joys and sadness of love. The Museum of Innocence describes the identity problems of Istanbul's half-western, half-traditional upper classes, their wedding rituals, their sexual morality, their troubled relations with religion, and their city's vast cultural history through the eyes of a man deeply in love.