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Title: The Museum of Innocence
Author: Orhan Pamuk, Maureen Freely (translator)
Narrator: John Lee
Format: Unabridged
Length: 20 hrs and 32 mins
Language: English
Release date: 10-20-09
Publisher: Random House Audio
Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 192 votes
Genres: Fiction, Literary
Publisher's Summary:
So begins the new novel, his first since winning the Nobel Prize, from the universally acclaimed author of Snow and My Name Is Red.
It is 1975, a perfect spring in Istanbul. Kemal, scion of one of the city's wealthiest families, is about to become engaged to Sibel, daughter of another prominent family, when he encounters Füsun, a beautiful shopgirl and a distant relation. Once the long-lost cousins violate the code of virginity, a rift begins to open between Kemal and the world of the Westernized Istanbul bourgeoisie - a world, as he lovingly describes it, with opulent parties and clubs, society gossip, restaurant rituals, picnics, and mansions on the Bosphorus, infused with the melancholy of decay - until finally he breaks off his engagement to Sibel. But his resolve comes too late.
For eight years Kemal will find excuses to visit another Istanbul, that of the impoverished backstreets where Füsun, her heart now hardened, lives with her parents, and where Kemal discovers the consolations of middle-class life. His obsessive love will also take him to the demimonde of Istanbul film circles, a scene of seedy bars, run-down hotels, and small men with big dreams doomed to failure.
In his feckless pursuit, Kemal becomes a compulsive collector of objects that chronicle his lovelorn progress and his afflicted heart's reactions: anger and impatience, remorse and humiliation, and daydreams that transform Istanbul into a cityscape of signs and specters of his beloved, from whom he can now extract only meaningful glances and stolen kisses in cars, movie houses, and shadowy corners of parks. A last change to realize his dream will come to an awful end before Kemal discovers that all he finally can possess, certainly and eternally, is the museum he has created of his collection, this map of a society's manners and mores, and of one man's broken heart.
Critic Reviews:
"[An] enchanting new novel of first love painfully sustained over a lifetime....Freelys translation captures the novelists playful performance as well as his serious collusion with Kemal. Her melding of tones follows Pamuks agility, to redirect our vision to the gravity of his tale" (Maureen Howard, New York Times Book Review)
"A Startling original. Every turn in the story seems fresh, disquieting, utterly unexpected...spellbindingly told....The genius of Pamuks novel is that although it can be read as a simpel romance, it is a richly complicated work with subtle and intricate layers." (Marie Arana, The Washington Post)
"a soaring, detailed...mausoleum of love....a masterful work." (Publishers Weekly)
Members Reviews:
one of the very best I've ever heard
That's not an exaggeration. This is one of the very best audio books I've ever listened to and I've listened to hundreds. (Okay, so I'm a Pamuk fan, too.)
True, the book is not about heavy plot or action or even suspense. It's about a man's obsessive search for his past (Istanbul) with the major themes being the role of women, love and loss and guilt and social class- change. In a sense it's about
Istanbul itself.
The first person protagonist is not a particularly likable guy - he's rich, spoiled, selfish and hypocritical. He's engaged to a woman of his own class but has a totally illicit affair with his much younger and very beautiful cousin.
