The Museum of Innocence

The Museum of Innocence is a novel by the Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, published in 2008. Set in Istanbul between 1975 and 1984, it tells the love story between Kemal, a wealthy businessman, and Füsun, a poorer distant relative. While preparing the book, Pamuk turned to YouTube to research Turkish music and film. An excerpt appeared in The New Yorker in 2009, and the English translation, by his long-time collaborator Maureen Freely, followed later that year.

Kemal has been engaged to Sibel for two months when he meets Füsun in a shop while buying a handbag for his fiancée. What follows is an intense and secretive physical and emotional affair. For a long time Kemal refuses to admit to himself that he has fallen completely in love, until Füsun vanishes just after attending his engagement party. The novel follows his grief, his consolation in objects and places linked to her, and the years in which he visits her family as a distant relation, waiting for another chance. When Füsun divorces, the two plan to marry, but fate separates them forever after one last night of passion.

The book also reflects on the tension between East and West, the influence of Europe and America on Istanbul's culture, and the taboo surrounding female virginity in 1970s Turkey. It was widely received, and Pamuk later turned it into a real museum in the Çukurcuma neighbourhood, opened in 2012, which displays the objects described in the story.