The Museum of Innocence (Hardcover) ~ Orhan Pamuk (Author) and M... Cover Art

The Museum of Innocence (Hardcover)

By: Orhan Pamuk (Author) and Maureen Freely (Translator)

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Review

"Part of the delight in THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE is in scouting out the serious games, yet giving oneself over to the charms of Pamuk's storytelling. He often makes use of genre, turns the expected response to his purpose."

"Pamuk successfully retains his role as literature's guide to Istanbul...which...is caught between two worlds and fully belongs to neither."

"[T]his is a masterful work....Nobel laureate Pamuk's latest is a soaring, detailed and laborious mausoleum of love." (starred review)

"Pamuk is a skillful writer, and many of his gifts are on ample display here. He pays particularly fine attention to the sensuous realm of experience and renders Istanbul deliciously palpable."

"[A] wonderful novel....As familiar as the subject of love might seem, THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE is a startling original. Every turn in the story seems fresh, disquieting, utterly unexpected....[It] is a deeply human and humane story. Masterfully translated, spellbindingly told, it is resounding confirmation that Orhan Pamuk is one of the great novelists of his generation. With this book, he literally puts love into our hands."

Publisher's note

Ending his engagement to pursue a married cousin, Kemal unsuccessfully woos the woman over the course of nine years, during which he amasses personal effects that reflect his obsession and render him a laughingstock among his peers. By the Nobel Prize-winning author of My Name Is Red.

From the universally acclaimed author of "Snow "and "My Name Is Red, "his first novel since winning the Nobel Prize.
It is 1975 in Istanbul. Kemal, thirty, from an upperclass family, is engaged to a girl of like background when by chance he encounters a long-lost relation: Fusun is a shopgirl, an eighteen-year-old beauty who stirs all the passion denied him in a society where sex outside marriage is taboo. Their incandescent liaison will flicker and die when Fusun learns of Kemal's engagement. But Kemal cannot forget her: he breaks up with his fiancee to pursue Fusun, only to lose her to another man.
For nine years Kemal finds excuses to visit Fusun's impoverished, conservative marital household, playing the kindly cousin, hoping to lure her back. But Fusun's heart is hardened. From his visits Kemal will take away nothing but odd personal effects, possessions he will collect and cherish, in the private religion his adoration becomes. His hoard will make him famous--and a laughingstock--in Istanbul society. And when a final chance at happiness is ripped away, all that remains to him is his museum, this map of a society's rituals and mores, and of one man's broken heart.
A stirring exploration of the nature of romantic attachment and the strange allure of collecting, this is Orhan Pamuk's greatest achievement.

Annotation

This lush saga of one man's enduring obsession following an abbreviated romance with his cousin is Orhan Pamuk's first novel since he became the first Turkish writer ever to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 2006. In 1975, Kemal is a shining example of the Turkish elite in Istanbul, enjoying the luxuries of the upper class and engaged to marry the lovely daughter of another wealthy family. But after Kemal encounters an alluring shopgirl named Fusun, he realizes the power of true love, and begins to relentlessly pursue her, even after discovering that she is his distant cousin. Eventually Kemal and Fusun consummate their love, but he hesitates at the thought of surrendering the indulgences of his societal position, until his indecision costs him both his fiancée and Kemal. To be sure, the doomed courtship phase of the story is well-told, but it is after the separation that Pamuk truly begins to display his mastery, as Kemal's interior obsession with Fusun manifests itself in his tragically bizarre behavior, as he begins to collect random objects related to his pursuit of her. As he gradually abandons the opulence of wealth and immerses himself among the dilapidated shacks and back alleys which are haunted by Fusun's presence, Kemal accumulates mementos which celebrate his failure and begin to weigh on his perceptions until his confidence inexorably shifts into cynicism.

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