The Museum of Innocence
2008 İletişim Edition
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| Author | Orhan Pamuk |
|---|---|
| Original title | Masumiyet Müzesi |
| Translator | Maureen Freely |
| Country | Turkey |
| Language | Turkish |
| Publisher | İletişim |
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Publication date
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2008 |
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Published in English
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2009 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 592 pp. (original Turkish) |
| ISBN | (original Turkish) |
| OCLC | 276510603 |
The Museum of Innocence (Turkish: Masumiyet Müzesi) is a novel by Orhan Pamuk, Nobel-laureate Turkish novelist published on August 29, 2008. The book, set in Istanbul between 1975 and 1984, is an account of the love story between the wealthy businessman Kemal and a poorer distant relative of his, Füsun.
Pamuk said he used YouTube to research Turkish music and film while preparing the novel.
In the writing of this book, Pamuk was influenced by the Bagatti Valsecchi Museum in Milan, Italy, as he noted in the museum's guestbook on June 27, 2007: “It is the third time that I have visited this extraordinary museum. I love this house, the idea and the imagination that hide behind these walls. They influenced me a lot for the novel I am writing, The Museum of Innocence. I am happy to be here for the third time.”
An excerpt, entitled "Distant Relations", appeared in The New Yorker on September 7, 2009.
The English translation, by his long-time collaborator Maureen Freely, was released on October 20, 2009 by Alfred A. Knopf.
Kemal has been engaged to a pretty girl named Sibel for two months when he meets a shop girl, Füsun, while buying a handbag for his fiancee. What follows in the next month and a half is an intense and secretive physical and emotional relationship between them. Kemal's happiest moment of life comes while making love the day Füsun confesses her deep love for him. Though it is clear that he has also fallen completely for Füsun, Kemal keeps denying this to himself, believing that his marriage with Sibel and secret relationship could continue forever. His reverie is broken when Füsun disappears just after attending his engagement. Now he has to come to terms with his deep attachment and love for Füsun. He goes through a very painful period for about a year, unable to meet Füsun and deriving consolation from objects and places related to his beloved and their lovemaking. His engagement to Sibel breaks off and finally Füsun responds to his letter and agrees to meet him. Füsun has got married, living with her husband and parents and pretends to meet Kemal just as a distant relation, with undercurrents of anger. For the next eight years Kemal keeps visiting the family for supper and expressing his love for Füsun in various ways, while finding consolation in various objects related to her that he carries away from the house. Finally after her father’s death, circumstances lead Füsun to divorce her husband. Füsun and Kemal are to be married after a trip around Europe together, but fate has something else in store and they become separated forever after a night of intense love-making. Kemal regards each object related to Füsun and their love, collected over the years, as portraying some discrete moment of happiness and bliss in the passage of those nine years. He decides to convert Füsun’s house into a museum of innocence, including all these objects and also other memorabilia related to the period.
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