A teacup. An old photograph. A clock, its workings exposed to create the feeling of time furiously ticking by, and a series of matchsticks used to tediously measure the minutes. Each of these objects was carefully collected by the Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, who spent decades scouring Istanbul junk dealers and antique shops for the everyday items that would inspire a novel he was writing about lost love. 

In 2008 he finally published The Museum of Innocence, which tells the story of Kemal, a wealthy ma…