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You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed

or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and welcome to Bookworm.

Today it's my great honor to have as my guest, Orhan Pamuk.

He is the Nobel Prize-winning author, most recently the Museum of Innocence published by Knopf.

His earlier novels include Snow, My Name is Red, the New Life, the Black Book, and the White

Castle. These are only those that have been translated into English. There is as well

a memoir of childhood and of Istanbul, called Istanbul, and a book of essays called Other Colors.

Now, I want to begin by highly recommending the Museum of Innocence because it is a novel

of genuine and thoroughly bereft passion. And it seems to me to be one of the most delicious books that I've read in a very long time.

If I compare it to Tolstoy, Zana Karenina, that's just my opinion. But I ask you to take me seriously.

Whereas the subject of scandal in Anna Karenina is, of course, adultery.

Here in the Museum of Innocence, the subject is virginity, and it is necessary to know that as late as

1975, when the novel begins, the subject of virginity is still very crucial to a Turkish marriage.

Can you explain?

Yes, of course, it's a social thing.

It's a historical thing.

It's an idea also unfortunately related to a person standing in society, that it's, in fact, in a chapter called some

unpleasant anthropological truths in order to convey the meaning of the book, perhaps tongue-in-cheek,

...