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The Museum of Innocence

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The Museum of Innocence

By: Orhan Pamuk, Maureen Freely
Narrated by: John Lee
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About this listen

The Museum of Innocence - set in Istanbul between 1975 and today - 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. In his romantic pursuit of Füsun over the next eight years, Kemal compulsively amasses a collection of objects that chronicles his lovelorn progress-a museum that is both a map of a society and of his heart.
The novel depicts a panoramic view of life in Istanbul as it chronicles this long, obsessive love affair; and Pamuk beautifully captures the identity crisis experienced by Istanbul's upper classes that find themselves caught between traditional and westernised ways of being. Orhan Pamuk's first novel since winning the Nobel Prize is a stirring love story and exploration of the nature of romance.
Pamuk built The Museum of Innocence in the house in which his hero's fictional family lived, to display Kemal's strange collection of objects associated with Fusun and their relationship. The house opened to the public in 2012 in the Beyoglu district of Istanbul.
'Pamuk has created a work concerning romantic love worthy to stand in the company of Lolita, Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina.' --Financial Times

©2013 Orhan Pamuk (P)2013 Faber & Faber Genre Fiction Metaphysical & Visionary
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“Museum of Innocence” is a lengthy read, literary in style and may not suit everyone, but the subject matter I found rather compelling. It is a novel about a young man from a wealthy business family in Istanbul who, when buying a gift for his fiancé, meets a most beautiful 18-year-old shop assistant from a very different social class. Initially, he becomes embroiled in an audacious and all-consuming affair, despite being betrothed to a seemingly perfect future spouse who is ideally suited to his family and status. The shop assistant - quite unable to cope with his ongoing engagement plans - disappears from his life unexpectedly and her beguiled lover subsequently becomes progressively obsessed by her loss. His obsession grows to the extent that it derails his desire to marry this perfect partner somewhat to the horror of both their families. His life becomes driven only by the whereabouts of his lost lover. No one he knows understands him anymore. So, when he does find her many years later, his own life by now somewhat in tatters, she is already married. His obsession does not diminish in any way at that point, but takes on a further pace and, although unconsummated, his ongoing passion is internalised and sublimated by way of infiltrating her extended family of which he becomes a regular and welcome part.

It is, of course, an intensely emotional and sad book with a feel reminiscent of ‘Crime & Punishment’ (Dostoyevsky). The oriental setting does not in any way alienate the reader, quite the contrary, but draws one into a society that could be in any city or town. Pamuk’s narrative generates anxiety in the reader, not unlike the obsession in the main subject of this novel, making him/her preoccupied by what might happen and how these behaviours might resolve. The ending will not disappoint but I would suspect for most less predictable than you might think.

Orhan Pamuk is 69 yoa, no beginner to writing, and a literary academic and 2006 Nobel Laureate. He has a string of novels and a significant number of writing accolades to his name. He also has generated enemies in Turkish society because of his tendency to criticise politicians and prominent people as well as his advocacy of ‘freedom of speech’. For readers who have not read this author and needing more than a complex plot in a crime scenario, Pamuk is a great find.

One of our great writers

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Loved this book.
So much life and so much sadness.
Exactly like in real life.

Excellent!

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The poetry and fluidity of the writing about love are sustained over 20 hrs of listening to that l have never wished to end.
Superb narration.

Immersed in love

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