The Museum of Innocence

The Museum of Innocence
2008 İletişim Edition
Author(s)	Orhan Pamuk
Original title	Masumiyet Müzesi
Country	Turkey
Language	Turkish
Publisher	İletişim
Publication date	2008
Published in English	2009
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	592 pp. (original Turkish)
ISBN	ISBN 978-975-050-60-93 (original Turkish)
OCLC Number	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 is a long and detailed account of the obsessive love that Kemal, a wealthy businessman, bears for Füsun, a lower class shop girl 12 years Kemal's junior, for over 30 years starting in 1975. Kemal loves without regard to the interests or situation of Füsun. Oblivious to his own selfishness, Kemal first refuses to give up his fiancée to be with the love of his life, and then becomes an obsessive collector of the artefacts of his life with Füsun. This is a relationship that is both lengthy and increasingly bizarre as Kemal objectifies Füsun and becomes a collector intent on satisfying his emotional obsession with his object of desire (Füsun) rather carrying on a healthy human relationship with his beloved. The book is filled with references to butterflies, a caged bird and other collectibles and collectors as Kemal carries out the fetishism of a collector. Kemal, while enthralled by Füsun, can’t in the end treat her as a subject, rather than an object – a human being rather than a thing.

But Kemal is not the only person that treats the beautiful young shop girl as an object: most of the men around Füsun desire her without regard for her own interests or feelings, but as an object of their lust. In the end, just as Hardy’s Tess of the d'Urbervilles or Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Füsun becomes the victim of the constraints of the desires of the men around her.

Pamuk said he used YouTube to research Turkish music and film while preparing the novel.^[1]

An excerpt, entitled Distant Relations appeared in The New Yorker on September 7, 2009.^[2]

The English translation, by his long-time collaborator Maureen Freely, was released on October 20, 2009 by Alfred A. Knopf.^{[citation needed]}

An actual museum

Pamuk is working on establishing an actual "Museum of Innocence", based on the museum described in the book. It is to be housed in a building in the Çukurcuma neighbourhood of Beyoğlu, Istanbul, and will display a collection evocative of everyday life and culture of Istanbul during the period in which the novel is set.^[3] Originally, the museum was scheduled to be exhibited at Frankfurt’s Schirn Kunsthalle in October 2008, during the annual Frankfurt Book Fair, but the exhibition was cancelled.^[4] It is now hoped that the museum will be opened in 2011.^[5] The project is supported by Istanbul 2010 – European Capital of Culture.^[6]

References

1. ^ Rich, Motoko (2008-10-16). "Turkish Novelist Denounces Government at Book Fair". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/16/world/europe/16frankfurt.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink. Retrieved 2008-10-16. 
2. ^ Relations, The New Yorker, September 7, 2009.
3. ^ "Nobel laureate Pamuk's "Museum of Innocence" to be opened in Istanbul". TurkNet. June 2, 2009. http://haber.turk.net/haber_detay.asp?ID=2282570&cat=EKO. Retrieved July 9, 2010. 
4. ^ "International News Digest – Orhan Pamuk cancels “Museum of Innocence”". Artforum. Week of July 7, 2008. http://www.artforum.com/news/mode=international&week=200827. Retrieved July 9, 2010. 
5. ^ "Room with a view: Pamuk explores İstanbul's double soul". Today's Zaman. September 30, 2010. http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-223082-room-with-a-view-pamuk-explores-istanbuls-double-soul.html. Retrieved October 9, 2010. 
6. ^ "2010 ECOC Support for the Museum of Innocence". Istanbul 2010 – European Capital of Culture. http://www.en.istanbul2010.org/HABER/GP_527259. Retrieved July 9, 2010. ^{[dead link]}

External links

• [1]
• Official website (Turkish)
• Review site for The Museum of Innocence