Museum of Innocence

The curse of the Nobel prize for literature is well known: few authors have ever escaped its clutches. The award is, of course, there to celebrate a life's work, so perhaps it's no surprise that laureates tend not to deliver their best work after taking the prize in Stockholm. Orhan Pamuk, however, seems only to be hitting his stride with The Museum of Innocence, his first novel since winning the Nobel.

The opening sentence - 'It was the happiest moment of my life, though I didn't know it.' - sets the tone of an elegiac, meditative and also deeply involved novel, obsessed with the nature of desire, love and longing. Kemal, the narrator, is engaged and part of a wealthy, influential Istanbul family, his life one of decaying opulence. But then a chance encounter with Füsin, a distant, poor relation forces Kemal to see another Istanbul - the one his love endures every day, and of which he is not able to be part.

The Museum of Innocence is a bravura performance from Pamuk, perhaps his most accessible and beautiful book yet. The city, its sins and it signs, are brought to life with a hazy, romantic shading, and the reader is swept up in its compelling narrative. This is everything world literature should be.