The Museum of Innocence

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£18.99

The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk begins ‘It was the happiest moment of my life, though I didn’t know it.’ In the perfect spring of 1975 Istanbul, Kemal, heir to one of the town’s wealthiest families, is about to become engaged to Sibel, from another aristocratic family, when he encounters Füsun, a beautiful shop girl and a distant relation.

With the breaking of the taboo of virginity, a rift begins to open up between Kemal and the privilaged world of westernized families in Istanbul he lovingly describes. For nine years Kemal will find excuses to visit the impoverished backstreets of other Istanbul and his love for his distant relative will take him to seedy film circles, cheap bars, sad hotels, and a society of small men with big dreams and bitter failures.

Kemal becomes a compulsive collector, chronicling his love and his obsessive heart’s reactions…all that will remain to him, certainly and eternally, is the museum he creates, a map of society’s rituals and mores, and of one man’s broken heart.