How Orhan Pamuk spent his Nobel Prize

Bring along a copy of the book, you get in free:

Once you have seen the Museum of Innocence and its often curious displays, you may turn to Pamuk’s 2008 encyclopedic novel by the same name. In fact, the museum and book were conceived together. The relation of the things you have seen in the museum becomes clearer. The displays basically follow the story, and each display corresponds with one chapter. In the novel the narrator, Kemal Basmacı, describes his growing obsession with Füsun, a distant relative from a lower-middle class family living just north of the Golden Horn. He begins to collect things and even steals them from Füsun’s home. For eight years he keeps inviting himself for dinner — some 1,593 times — to have countless glasses of rakı, the anise liquor somewhat similar to Greek ouzo or French pastis. As much as the book tells this story, the museum is a homage to Kemal’s one-time lover. Their love remains unfulfilled because Füsun is of lower standing...

http://thesmartset.com/the-museum-of-innocence/