THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE by Orhan Pamuk

(NOVEL)

The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk (Vintage International, 2009, paperback $15.95).

Reviewed by Laird Addis, Jr.

The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk is yet another great novel by the Turkish writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006.  I have read all of his novels (at least all that have been translated into English) as well as his memoir of growing up in Istanbul, and may have enjoyed this one the most.  It is a perhaps slightly improbable love story that takes place mostly in Istanbul over several years, in the 1970’s and 80’s, and involves at many levels the conflicts of the traditional Muslim culture of Turkey with the secular, European- oriented culture that the founder of modern Turkey, Ataturk, established after the first world war.  There is much description of Istanbul itself (the city I most want to visit of those I have not yet visited) and the surrounding area, especially where the wealthy went (and probably still go) to get out of the city in the summer.  The history it tells during the years of the story includes the military coup of 1980, and its immediate consequences.  Finally, the story includes a wonderful kind of self-reference insofar as the author is himself a minor character in the story but with a twist not to be revealed here.  (Vintage International, 2009, paperback $15.95)

(Pamuk, incidentally, was a student in the University of Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop in the 1980’s, which was then located in my own office building.  So I must have seen him many times, before he was famous.  The University hoped to give him an honorary doctorate a few years ago, but because of death threats against him by Islamic fanatics, the University decided it couldn’t give him adequate security.)

© 2012