As a result, the way we perceive the city differs radically. Born in Strasbourg, raised by a single mother in Ankara, Madrid, Cologne, Amman, and then a newcomer in Istanbul, I have led a nomadic life, insider and outsider. Pamuk was born and raised in Istanbul, the son of an upper-class Nişantaşi family, a sense of continuity central to his life. It features an array of everyday items – from wedding invitations and newspaper cuttings, to tin spoons and salt shakers – that chronicle the couple’s ill-fated romance, while also telling the story of the two families, and the city of Istanbul itself.Įveryday items chronicle the romance at the heart of Pamuk’s novel The Museum of Innocence – and echo changing lives in Istanbul and Turkey. The museum has grown simultaneously with the novel of the same name: a story of lost love about an (already engaged) wealthy socialite called Kemal and his obsessive love for his cousin twice removed, a beautiful shopgirl called Füsun. Pamuk is excited and slightly nervous, a sign of how much he cares about his brainchild. We meet at Somerset House in London, where Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence is making an appearance. These imperial dreams have encouraged a disastrous neo-Ottoman foreign policy in the Middle East, a dangerous fusion of nationalism and Islamism.

Hence all the jingoistic rhetoric in Turkey about “ our noble Ottoman ancestors”.

A subjective way of reading the past, introduced from above, means the majority view triumphs over individuality and diversity. And where there is such lamentably poor memory, it is easier for the state’s selective memory to survive unquestioned. Memory is kept alive, through statues, signs and books, too. As you walk the streets of London, you come across countless plaques commemorating the people – composers, novelists, politicians – who lived in those buildings. Istanbul is a city of collective amnesia. Everything is written in water, except the works of the great architects, such as Sinan, which are written in stone and the lines of the great poets, such as Nazim Hikmet, which are learnt by heart.

Orhan pamuk museum of innocence