3.0
Nights of Plague
ByPublisher Description
From the the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature: Part detective story, part historical epic—a bold and brilliant novel that imagines a plague ravaging a fictional island in the Ottoman Empire.
It is April 1900, in the Levant, on the imaginary island of Mingheria—the twenty-ninth state of the Ottoman Empire—located in the eastern Mediterranean between Crete and Cyprus. Half the population is Muslim, the other half are Orthodox Greeks, and tension is high between the two. When a plague arrives—brought either by Muslim pilgrims returning from the Mecca or by merchant vessels coming from Alexandria—the island revolts.
To stop the epidemic, the Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid II sends his most accomplished quarantine expert to the island—an Orthodox Christian. Some of the Muslims, including followers of a popular religious sect and its leader Sheikh Hamdullah, refuse to take precautions or respect the quarantine. And then a murder occurs.
As the plague continues its rapid spread, the Sultan sends a second doctor to the island, this time a Muslim, and strict quarantine measures are declared. But the incompetence of the island’s governor and local administration and the people’s refusal to respect the bans doom the quarantine to failure, and the death count continues to rise. Faced with the danger that the plague might spread to the West and to Istanbul, the Sultan bows to international pressure and allows foreign and Ottoman warships to blockade the island. Now the people of Mingheria are on their own, and they must find a way to defeat the plague themselves.
Steeped in history and rife with suspense, Nights of Plague is an epic story set more than one hundred years ago, with themes that feel remarkably contemporary.
It is April 1900, in the Levant, on the imaginary island of Mingheria—the twenty-ninth state of the Ottoman Empire—located in the eastern Mediterranean between Crete and Cyprus. Half the population is Muslim, the other half are Orthodox Greeks, and tension is high between the two. When a plague arrives—brought either by Muslim pilgrims returning from the Mecca or by merchant vessels coming from Alexandria—the island revolts.
To stop the epidemic, the Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid II sends his most accomplished quarantine expert to the island—an Orthodox Christian. Some of the Muslims, including followers of a popular religious sect and its leader Sheikh Hamdullah, refuse to take precautions or respect the quarantine. And then a murder occurs.
As the plague continues its rapid spread, the Sultan sends a second doctor to the island, this time a Muslim, and strict quarantine measures are declared. But the incompetence of the island’s governor and local administration and the people’s refusal to respect the bans doom the quarantine to failure, and the death count continues to rise. Faced with the danger that the plague might spread to the West and to Istanbul, the Sultan bows to international pressure and allows foreign and Ottoman warships to blockade the island. Now the people of Mingheria are on their own, and they must find a way to defeat the plague themselves.
Steeped in history and rife with suspense, Nights of Plague is an epic story set more than one hundred years ago, with themes that feel remarkably contemporary.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesNights of Plague Reviews
3.0
“From the title, a novel about the fast moving and deadly bubonic plague. This was set in 1901 on a fictional island somewhere in the Aegean. Interesting parallels to Covid and our global response. Multilayered maddening sad and somehow hopeful. I never fully got pulled into the story so felt like I was skimming through a fact sheet most of the time. Some books are an immersive pleasure, others can be a chore to get through. I found this one to be the latter. It won a Nobel Prize for Literature so what do I know?”
“This took me months to finish but was a brilliant one. the historical fiction is written so well. some chapters really make you feel like you are yourself on that island. some part of the novel is, of course, so slow you feel like leaving the book, but once you push through, it's a good one. especially for those who have seen covid ,this book is more relatable.”
“This books takes place on the fictional island of Mingheria during an outbreak of the bubonic plague. It's especially interesting to read since we have lived during COVID. There are so many interesting elements here: the plague, politics, and religion. While I found this really interesting, at times it felt a bit long. I was never necessarily bored though, just felt like it could have been shorter.”
About Orhan Pamuk
ORHAN PAMUK won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. His novel My Name Is Red won the 2003 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been translated into more than sixty languages. He lives in Istanbul. Translated by Ekin Oklap.
Other books by Orhan Pamuk
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