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Nights of Plague (Template:Lang-tr) is a 2021 novel by Orhan Pamuk. Its Pamuk's 11th and longest novel isnpired from historical events, set on a fictitious island in the eastern Mediterranean between Crete and Cyprus called Mingheria. A number of early reviewers have observed that Nights of Plague's plot is similar to Albert Camus' existentialist novel The Plague. Its English translation was published by Knopf Doubleday in United States and Faber and Faber in United Kingdom.

Plot Summary

In the year 1901, a ship from Istanbul arrives on Mingheria, an island plagued by the Bubonic plague. This island serves as a microcosm of the declining Ottoman Empire, where diverse groups coexist but are on the brink of disintegration. The plague, in a literal sense, mirrors the empire's metaphorical characterization as "the sick man of Europe." To combat the outbreak, the Sultan dispatches Bonkowski Pasha, the empire's chief inspector of public health, followed by a Muslim epidemiologist, Prince Consort Doctor Nuri Bey, and his wife, Princess Pakize.

When the chief inspector is murdered, it falls upon Princess Pakize and Prince Consort Doctor Nuri Bey to employ methods reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes to identify the culprit. Simultaneously, Western medicine works to control the plague. However, the islanders resist quarantine measures, resulting in an increasing number of infectious bodies. Amidst this chaos, gruesome discoveries like the corpses of two individuals fused together are made, leaving questions about their relationship unanswered.

Themes and style

Matt A. Hanson of World Literature Today noted that the motifs of Nights of Plague are prevalent in the latter years of Ottoman collapse, notably during Abdul Hamid's disastrous reign, which Pamuk fictionalises the formation of the fragmented political identities that sparked World War I and eventually strengthened the foundations of the Turkish republic rising from the ashes of its sick, old-man empire. According to Judith Shulevitz of The Atlantic Nights of Plague is plainly satire and metaphor, and narrated the mordant riffs on Ottoman, revolutionary, and nationalist leadership styles amount to a critique of Atatürk, Kemalism, and even President Erdoğan's government—but not in a single sentence.

Reception

James Wood in his review for The New Yorker noted that a peculiar way in which Pamuk, attentive to how, in history, the disease has been unfairly Orientalized, relishes, in fiction, shamelessly Orientalizing his own island, imbuing it with swirls of Ottoman magic and mythology, This reader was not surprised to discover Pamuk taking a jab at Edward Said at the end of the work, for the "negatively inflected sense" of Said's academic term "Orientalist."

In his review for The Times Peter Kemp called it masterfully weaving a tale of intrigue and disease on the fictional island of Mingheria.

References

1. Walia, Shelly. out ... Tribune In "'Nights of Plague' by Orhan Pamuk: Creating fiction out of history". The Tribune (India). {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)
2. Kellman, Steven G. (4 October 2022). "Orhan Pamuk's 'Nights of Plague' entangles an epidemic with a (fictional) revolution". Los Angeles Times.
3. Ley, James (11 November 2022). "'Extraordinary achievement': Nobel winner gives us one of his finest creations". The Sydney Morning Herald.
4. Hughes-Hallett, Lucy (21 September 2022). "Nights of Plague by Orhan Pamuk review – a playful approach to big themes". The Guardian.
5. Gates, David (30 September 2022). "A Nobelist's New Novel, Rife With Pestilence and Writerly Tricks". The New York Times.
6. Gordon, Peter (24 October 2022). ""Nights of Plague" by Orhan Pamuk". Asian Review of Books.
7. Genç, Kaya (4 April 2023). "Orhan Pamuk Turns an Outbreak Into a Revolution". The New Republic.
8. Karthik, Savitha. "Shaped by the scourge". Deccan Herald.
9. Goldsmith, Jane Turner (18 October 2022). "Curfews, quarantine, fake news, insurrection: Orhan Pamuk's Nights of Plague feels eerily prescient". The Conversation.
10. Hoffert, Barbara. "Reading the World | Key Works of Translated Fiction for Fall". Library Journal.
11. Hanson, Matt. "Nights of Plague: A Novel by Orhan Pamuk". World Literature Today.
12. Shulevitz, Judith (30 September 2022). "Orhan Pamuk's Literature of Paranoia". The Atlantic.
13. Kemp, Peter (27 September 2023). "Nights of Plague by Orhan Pamuk review — a Turkish delight". The Times.
14. Wood, James (24 October 2022). "Outbreaks and Uprisings in Orhan Pamuk's "Nights of Plague"". The New Yorker.

• Turkish novels
• 2021 novels
• Historical fiction
• Novels by Orhan Pamuk
• Novels set in the 1900s
• Detective novels
• Novels set in the Ottoman Empire