内容简介
“It was the happiest moment of my life, though I didn’t knowit.” So begins the new novel, his first since winning the NobelPrize, from the universally acclaimed author of Snow and My Name IsRed.It is 1975, a perfect spring in Istanbul. Kemal, scion of oneof the city’s wealthiest families, is about to become engaged toSibel, daughter of another prominent family, when he encountersFüsun, a beautiful shopgirl and a distant relation. Once thelong-lost cousins violate the code of virginity, a rift begins toopen between Kemal and the world of the Westernized Istanbulbourgeosie—a world, as he lovingly describes it, with opulentparties and clubs, society gossip, restaurant rituals, picnics, andmansions on the Bosphorus, infused with the melancholy ofdecay—until finally he breaks off his engagement to Sibel. But hisresolve comes too late.For eight years Kemal will find excuses tovisit another Istanbul, that of the impoverished backstreets whereFüsun, her heart now hardened, lives with her parents, and whereKemal discovers the consolations of middle-class life at a dinnertable in front of the television. His obsessive love will also takehim to the demimonde of Istanbul film circles (where he promises tomake Füsun a star), a scene of seedy bars, run-down cheap hotels,and small men with big dreams doomed to bitter failure.In hisfeckless pursuit, Kemal becomes a compulsive collector of objectsthat chronicle his lovelorn progress and his afflicted heart’sreactions: anger and impatience, remorse and humiliation, deludedhopes of recovery, and daydreams that transform Istanbul into acityscape of signs and specters of his beloved, from whom now hecan extract only meaningful glances and stolen kisses in cars,movie houses, and shadowy corners of parks. A last change torealize his dream will come to an awful end before Kemal discoversthat all he finally can possess, certainly and eternally, is themuseum he has created of his collection, this map of a society’smanners and mores, and of one man’s broken heart.