The Museum of Innocence — Orhan Pamuk

The Museum of Innocence set in Istanbul between 1975 and today tells the story of Kemal the son of one of Istanbul s richest families and of his obsessive love for a poor and distant relation the beautiful Fusun who is a shop girl in a small boutique The novel depicts a panoramic view of life in Istanbul as it chronicles this long obsessive love affair between Kemal and Fusun and Pamuk beautifully captures the identity crisis experienced by Istanbul s upper classes who find themselves caught between traditional and westernised ways of being For the past ten years Pamuk has been setting up a museum in the house in which his hero s fictional family lived to display Kemal s strange collection of objects associated with Fusun and their relationship The museum will be called The Museum of Innocence and it opens in 2010