Orhan Pamuk’s “Museum of Innocence”

In Orhan Pamuk’s novel The Museum of Innocence, an aging businessman remembers his brief, decades-old affair with a younger woman by examining a collection of items related to her. As he considers each item in turn, he guides the reader through the lasting effects this bizarre relationship had on himeven as he fails to grasp the greater meaning. Pamuk is a skilled writer, and his recurring imagery of butterflies and caged birds is effective, but not overbearing. From the beginning, oppression and objectification are the novel’s main concerns.The Museum of Innocence is Pamuk’s first novel since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006. The Swedish Academy noted that within his body of work and “in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city Istanbul, Pamuk has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures.”Although Pamuk started writing regularly in 1974, Western readers were not exposed to his work until 1990, when his 1985 novel The White Castle first appeared in English. This also established the author’s move toward postmodern elements in his fiction, obvious from even a brief description of the plot. Taking place in the 17th century, a young Italian is captured by the Turkish fleet and made to serve a man who appears to be his twin.In The Black Book, Pamuk wrapped the story of one man’s identity crisis within the guise of a detective novel, and in The New Life, a Turkish engineering student becomes enraptured with a fictional book of the same title. Other works by Pamuk include My Name Is Red, Snow, Istanbul: Memories of a City, and Other Colors: Essays and a Story. The last three titles were translated by Maureen Freely, who also translated The Museum of Innocence (and contributed a second translation of The Black Book to follow up on the original by Gneli Gn). Interestingly, Freely and Pamuk attended Istanbul’s Robert College at the same time, but did not meet until afterwards. It almost sounds like a plot that could wind up in the inventive Pamuk’s next novel.The Museum of Innocence is a great place to start if you’ve never read Pamuk’s work, and a wonderful addition to the author’s body of work. It is a meaty novel, weighing in at 560 pages, but also a memorable one. In Istanbul, it has even inspired a real-life museum set to open in 2011. The exhibition will portray artifacts from the era in which the novel is set.