World of characters

The novel has 83 chapters, and the museum was supposed to have 83 vitrines, or boxes as Pamuk puts it. There are about 60 of them on show, though, from ornaments, handkerchief, cologne bottles to saltshakers, a box of cards and ashtrays. Pamuk numbered them according to the chapters in which they appear in the novel. It took the author more than eight years to think, develop and implement the idea of the museum. He collected the objects from his family, or flea markets. Some of them are ready-made fakes. He also commissioned Turkish contemporary artists and sculptors to make objects that fit into the story.

Like Kemal in the novel, Pamuk has visited museums around the world, taking photographs and paying attention to details, in order to figure out how to run this museum. He put some of the Nobel Prize money into the museum program and was worried about the cost, but he's happy now that he's not putting any money from his own pocket. Replicas of these boxes have been on tour of many countries.

According to Pamuk, he's working on a project to hold the exhibition in several Chinese cities, including Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing.

He sees it as a city museum that represents the middle, upper-class life of Istanbul in the 1970s and '80s. Changes in Istanbul, his "hometown", have been a consistent theme of his works.

"Time wipes out everything except objects that we associate with what we have lived. Those objects have the power to bring the past to present, and the museums convert time into space."

Pamuk says the space has a sort of mystical quality that provides an aura of being out of this time: "Perhaps I love museums because I'm romantic. I cannot stand the present. The present moment always seems boring and repressive to me. When I go to a museum, wow, my imagination opens up."