Orhan Pamuk's The Museum of Innocence

On May 3rd, an article titled Turkish Novelist Unveils New Museum by Ayla Albayrak, was posted on the Wall Street Journal's blog. In the post, Albayrak writes:

Istanbul’s cultural circles have been abuzz in recent days after Turkey’s most famous novelist, Orhan Pamuk, unveiled his latest cultural contribution: a peculiar little museum touted as being the first of its kind.

The Museum of Innocence is the world’s first museum based on a novel; in this case, Mr. Pamuk’s romantic story of the same name published four years ago. The project, he says, revived “the dead artist” inside him.

Turkey’s only Nobel-winning writer and now a professor of literature at Columbia University, Mr. Pamuk is famed as a novelist who has sought to translate Turkey’s complex historical and political debates through his writing. He has won plaudits in the West and a degree of notoriety from Turks for tackling taboo subjects related to his country’s history.

But Mr. Pamuk says the Musuem of Innocence isn’t about him: “It’s about the book.”

“This is not a writer’s home museum. This is a museum of a novel,” Mr. Pamuk told The Wall Street Journal after the museum opened on Friday.

This museum does sound intriguing and very unique! I now want to read both the novel the museum is based on and visit the museum itself some day. Click on the link above for the full story.