Kemal is a rising young businessman about to become engaged to the ideal woman, when he falls in love with 18-year-old Fusun, a boutique clerk. As this new relationship bursts over him, Kemal is so impassioned that he doesn’t see why he can’t have a wife and a lover. Both women dump him, but he remains obsessed with Fusun, eventually tracking her down and courting her for eight years, even though she’s married by then. Kemal, though self-absorbed, is so earnest and inventive in his plans and theories that he’s an unexpectedly engaging protagonist. And the inward focus of his emotional story is balanced by his habit of collecting objects for his museum. Started as part of his obsession, this collection of figurines, candles, glasses—anything related to Fusun—expands to document a wide range of Turkish life from the mid-1970s on. In fact Pamuk, the Nobel laureate, has been working for the last decade to establish such a museum as a tribute to his own enduring beloved, Istanbul.