Quotidian Modernities in Orhan Pamuk's Museum of Innocence and Sam Selvon's The Lonel Londoners

The spatial and temporal history of the cityscape is written by the everyday users of the city. The encounters and exchanges of cultural remnants and sharing of histories create multiple narratives on each modern city. The paper attempts to explore two cities, London and Istanbul, in the later half of 20th century in history through two unique literary texts. Orhan Pamuk's The Museum of Innocence and Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners are juxtaposed to explore quotidian modernities shaping up and reflected in the cityscapes of Istanbul and London, respectively. The paper explores how movements of wanderers and workers in these cities recreate newer engagements and often alternative cartographies drawing from Walter Benjamin's idea of 'flaneur.' It also presents how museums create and validate historical narratives in connection with Pamuk's act of building a museum in Istanbul, 'writing back' western cultural imperialism and contests the claims in a London Museum's exhibition that portrays a perfect picture of cosmopolitanism in the city in 1900s. Furthermore, the study explores how modernity presented by Pamuk and Selvon challenge the 'monocivilizational' narrative and propose through their characters, a narrative of modernity that is quotidian and multi-modal.