


The Museum of Innocence ( official site) is located in Çukurcuma, a central Istanbul neighborhood lined with antique shops, just as it is described in the book. While the book was released in 2008, the actual museum didn’t open until 2012. Thus, The Museum of Innocence is born, serving as a device through which the narrator commemorates his life & time with her. Throughout all of this time, Kemal collects artifacts relating to Füsun & that era in Istanbul. The book then follows the ensuing years where Kemal first tries to track Füsun down, then attempts to win back her love. The two are supposed to meet at his secret love apartment the next day, but she doesn’t show up. Kemal, being an idiot who thinks he can somehow get married and also keep secretly seeing the woman who he is actually in love with, invites Füsun to his engagement party. Kemal & Füsun continue to meet in secret, fall in love, & become increasingly close.

This is a problem because he’s engaged to someone else, a woman named Sibel who is of a similar societal status as he is. In 1970s Istanbul, a rich businessman named Kemal falls in love with a girl named Füsun, who he meets in a shop. “The Museum of Innocence” is a romantic story. I couldn’t wait to find out what would happen next. Once I started the book, I couldn’t put it down, breezing through all 700-odd pages in just a few days. I’ll try to keep it as spoiler-free as possible, but skip this part if you really don’t want to know anything about the plot of “The Museum of Innocence”. Here’s a very brief synopsis of “ The Museum of Innocence.” The book was Orhan Pamuk’s first novel released after he won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature.
