The Museum of Innocence
Orhan Pamuk, 2009
Knopf Doubleday
560 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307386243
Summary
A sweeping, emotionally charged novel of the nature of romantic attachment and the strange allure of collecting—this is Orhan Pamuk’s greatest achievement.
It is Istanbul in 1975. Kemal is a rich and engaged man when he by chance encounters a long-lost relation, Fusun, a young shopgirl whose beauty stirs all the passion denied him in a society where sex outside marriage is taboo.
Fusun ends their liaison when she learns of Kemal’s engagement. But Kemal cannot forget her: for nine years he tries to change her mind, meanwhile stealing from her an odd assortment of personal items, which he collects and cherishes—a “museum of innocence” that he puts on display to tell the heartbreaking story of a love that shaped a life. (From the publisher.)