last updated: 30 Oct 2010
I have read the novel, The Museum of Innocence, in Turkish last year. In strictly literary terms, this is his weakest novel. However, a very different sort of project intended here. An actual museum has been built in Istanbul and will be opened soon. This book is a novel-catalogue that actual museum and a great documentary of a particular section of Istanbul’s everyday life. Another intervention to the lives of republican Turkish elites. In the mean time, I have a plan to assign the first 100 pages to my first year students which has a very rich account of approaches to relations, sex and gender roles which are still valid in contemporary Turkish lives.
I was not in love with the literary level of narratives particularly but towards the end I fell in love and in the last pages I remember feeling sad and crying… Thank you Orhan Pamuk. You do enrich our lives.