Museum of Innocence

This is a novel by the Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, published on August 29, 2008. The story takes place in Istanbul between 1975 and 1984 and is a love story between the wealthy businessman Kemal and his distant relative, the poor Füsun. Pamuk mentioned that he used YouTube to search for Turkish films and music while preparing the novel. Excerpts from the novel appeared in the New Yorker newspaper under the title "Distant Relationships" on September 7, 2009, and the English translation of the novel was done by Pamuk's former assistant (Mourine Freely) and was edited on October 20, 2009, by Alfred Knopf. Kemal had been engaged to a beautiful girl named Sevil for two months when he met the shopkeeper's seller "Füsun" while buying a handbag for his fiancée. This was followed by a passionate, emotional, and secret physical relationship between them for the next month and a half. The happiest moment in Kemal's life was when they made love on the day Füsun confessed her deep love for him. Although it was also clear that Kemal was completely in love with Füsun, he still denied it to himself, believing that his marriage to Sevil and his secret relationship could last forever. Kemal's daydreams are shattered when Füsun disappears after attending his engagement, and he must now reconcile with his deep attachment and love for Füsun. Kemal goes through a difficult year, unable to meet Füsun, and finds solace in objects and places connected to his beloved and their love-making. He breaks off his engagement to Sevil, and Füsun finally responds to his message and agrees to meet him. Füsun had married with feelings of anger and lives with her husband and parents, claiming that her meeting with Kemal was just a distant relative. Over the next eight years, Kemal repeatedly visits her family for dinner, expressing his love for Füsun in various ways, while finding comfort in her belongings that he carries away from home. Finally, after Füsun's father's death, circumstances lead Füsun to divorce her husband. Kemal and Füsun marry after spending a journey together around Europe, but fate has something else in store, and they become separated forever after a night of intense intimacy. Kemal considers everything he accumulated over the years related to Füsun and their love as a depiction of separate moments of happiness and bliss during those nine years. He decides to turn Füsun’s house into the Museum of Innocence, including all those objects and other memorabilia associated with that period.