Volume V Special Issue IV October 2025

Name of Author : Paul Thomas Raj V, Dr. J.Bobby Rajakanthi

Title of the paper : From Novel to Museum: Memory, Materiality, and Cultural Identity in Orhan Pamuks The Museum of Innocence

Abstract: Orhan Pamuks The Museum of Innocence 2008, together with the physical museum he inaugurated in Istanbul in 2012, forms a unique literary cultural experiment that blurs the boundaries between fiction and reality, novel and archive, personal memory and collective history. This paper examines how Pamuks narrative and curatorial project intersect to explore the dynamics of memory, materiality, and cultural identity in modern Turkey. Pamuk intensifies the novel’s metafictional dimension by inserting himself into the story as both author and curator, collapsing distinctions between fiction and reality. His dual role underscores the idea that the novelist is not only a storyteller but also a cultural archivist. This metafictionality takes material form in the actual Museum of Innocence in Istanbul, where thousands of objects are displayed in alignment with the novels chapters. By bringing fiction into material space, Pamuk challenges conventional ideas of authorship and extends literature beyond the page, turning narrative into exhibition and fiction into cultural heritage. Situating The Museum of Innocence within postmodern narrative strategies and theories of cultural memory, and drawing on Linda Hutcheon, Pierre Nora, and Susan Stewart, this paper argues that Pamuk creates a hybrid living archive that transforms literature into cultural memory.

Keywords : Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence, memory, materiality, cultural identity.

DOI :

Page Number : 53-59