The Museum of Innocence

From the universally acclaimed author of Snow and My Name Is Red,his first novel since winning the Nobel Prize.

It is 1975 in Istanbul. Kemal, thirty, from an upperclass family, is engaged to a girl of like background when by chance he encounters a long-lost relation: F?¬sun is a shopgirl, an eighteen-year-old beauty who stirs all the passion denied him in a society where sex outside marriage is taboo. Their incandescent liaison will flicker and die when F?¬sun learns of Kemalƒ??s engagement. But Kemal cannot forget her: he breaks up with his fianc??e to pursue F?¬sun, only to lose her to another man.

For nine years Kemal finds excuses to visit F?¬sunƒ??s impoverished, conservative marital household, playing the kindly cousin, hoping to lure her back. But F?¬sunƒ??s heart is hardened. From his visits Kemal will take away nothing but odd personal effects, possessions he will collect and cherish, in the private religion his adoration becomes. His hoard will make him famousƒ??and a laughingstockƒ??in Istanbul society. And when a final chance at happiness is ripped away, all that remains to him is his museum, this map of a societyƒ??s rituals and mores, and of one manƒ??s broken heart.

A stirring exploration of the nature of romantic attachment and the strange allure of collecting, this is Orhan Pamukƒ??s greatest achievement.