Nights of Plague: A novel

A colossal rendering of a pandemic, any pandemic, in its intricacies of bravery and odious behavior in a place made so real by his writing that I looked it up. Amazing

Nights of Plague has to be one of Orhan Pamuk’s most impressive feats. Having created a real life museum to mirror a fictional one and made himself a character in some of his earlier writings, he now has created an imaginary island in the Mediterranean and successfully intertwined its history with the real history of the Ottoman Empire in the early twentieth century.It takes not only a fairly ingenious writer to compose such historical fiction, it also takes someone deeply versed in Turkish history. As any reader of Pamuk knows he certainly has no trouble meeting either criteria.But there are less attractive aspects of this work. The themes—women’s liberation, science versus religion, political corruption, etc. are dealt with in a cliched manner.The book is also almost seven hundred pages long. As someone who didn’t particularly empathize with the major characters it was something of a slog to complete.Nevertheless, the fictionalized universe Pamuk has created is the work of an unusually gifted author. And readers should recall that this book was originally written for publication in Turkey where the themes are more controversial. A very well written book that this reader personally found rather boring. Other readers may, of course, differ.

By the time I finally gave this up, I realized I felt like I'd been reading an outline of a story. The plot & characters were there, but there didn't seem to be anything or anyone specific to care about.There was a murder, but it didn't seem to be the focus. There was a revolution of sorts, but it seemed to be almost accidental. There were deaths from the plague, but the characters of the dead had not been developed to any great extent & I found it hard to care.....It felt like we had too many details about some things & not enough about others.The invented island itself was the only "character" I felt any attachment for. It felt more fleshed out than any of the humans.I've enjoyed numerous other works by this author. I'd recommend "Snow" or A Strangeness in My Mind" over this one. Or almost any other one for that matter....

How does a book about the bubonic plague turn into a vividly realized history of the Ottoman empire set on a fairy tale island and inhabited by fully-realized characters? Pamuk is at his best, combining stories about the plague and its ravagers with the competing narratives of religious and cultural confrontations embodied by an amazing cast of fascinating people. The coda is a lovely short story all its own - I wonder whether it was written first? - that adds still more depth and resonance to the book, and provides a perfect ending to an already fantastic novel.

A must read for any non-Turk who has visited this enchanting country. And if you have not yet travelled there, you will feel compelled to experience it for yourself upon completion of this magnificent book.

This is a monumental work but I fell at pretty much the first fence. The story is so held up with diversions that nothing seemed to join up. Suddenly the reader is taken off into pages about the history of the conflict between China and Japan. I was 40 pages in and gave up.

It wasn’t COVID that made me interested in plagues and human reaction to them. I have read numerous books about the Black Death, Ebola, and other modern vectors of plague, as well as novels like The Plague by Camus (one of my all-time favorites). Of course, the current pandemic has affected the literature of plagues and, I suspect, this novel would never have been written without it. Still, in the hands of such an expert writer as Mr. Pamuk, there is much to like.It tells the story of the fictional Mediterranean island of Mingheria, part of the Ottoman Empire in the year 1901. At the start of the outbreak of a mysterious plague, the sultan sends his foremost expert on quarantine, Bonkowski Pasha, to manage the situation. Murdered in short order, the sultan then sends his niece, Princess Pakize, and her husband, Dr. Nuri, to find the murderer (using the techniques of Sherlock Holmes) and manage the quarantine.Throughout the novel, it is easy to see connections between the reactions of the islands inhabitants to the strictures of quarantine and what we’ve seen in countries around the world recently. Mingheria is populated mainly by Muslims and Greek Christians who are as difficult to convince of the need for quarantine and as problematic to manage as Democrats and Republicans are in the United States today. It is easy to see where Mr. Pamuk gets much of his inspiration.Still, this novel is a slow burn. It is lengthy (which is something of which I approve), but it takes a while to really get going. It takes many chapters for the wide cast of characters to receive appropriate introduction and development, which is slow going for a while. It isn’t until about halfway through, when the politics of the island really get shaken up, that the plot starts to cook and the story seriously gains some energy.In the end, however, it is definitely a worthwhile read for someone with the appropriate patience. It is interesting to immerse oneself in the names & titles of the characters (constantly repeated) and, for Westerners like me anyway, delve into a cultural milieu about which I know little, and see something of the clash between East and West that was happening during this period. Mr. Pamuk is a writer I’ve grown to admire, and this novel is a fine addition to his oeuvre.

Six years ago Orhan Pamuk, recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature, began writing ‘Nights of Plague’ about the effect in 1901 of an outbreak of the bubonic plague on a fictional island.The history of the plague has been a long time interest for him. Then, by the time of this novel’s 2021 publication in Turkey, the reality of a global pandemic, including quarantine protocols and accompanying political controversies, had become reality. ‘Nights of Plague’ has now been translated from the Turkish by Ekin Oklap, who had translated a number of his previous novels.In the Preface Mîna Mingher, the fictional author of this epic literary novel, writes: “This is both a historical novel and a history written in the form of a novel. In this story of what took place during the most eventful and momentous six months in the life of the island of Mingheria, pearl of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, I have also included many tales from the history of this country I love so dearly.”The island of Mingheria, the twenty-ninth state of the Ottoman Empire, is located in the eastern Mediterranean between Crete and Cyprus. Here religious and cultural tensions run high as half the population is Muslim, while the other half are Orthodox Greeks. Then the bubonic plague arrives on the island. Its origins are unclear- it may have been brought by Muslim pilgrims returning from Mecca or by merchant vessels coming from Alexandria. Whatever the source, this uncertainty increases the civil unrest.Given the length of the novel, it’s impossible to say much about the plot apart from finding that many of the events and attitudes about the plague itself and the measures taken to control it on the island echo the events in recent years linked to the global pandemic.As I have read a couple of Pamuk’s earlier novels, I was aware of his style and was prepared to immerse myself in the narrative. It was a surprise to have the novel framed as an account by Mîna Mingher with her deep links to Mingheria and I was very impressed with Orhan Pamuk’s world building throughout. There were times when I was convinced that I was reading a work of history.Overall, on all counts of plot, characters, and setting I found this an incredible novel infused with Pamuk’s exquisite writing. Given its high quality and the topicality of its themes, I expect that ‘Nights of Plague’ will be a contender for the 2023 International Booker Prize.

Orhan Pamuk is a literary success and Nobel prize winner. So this could have been a great book. And indeed its theme of plague, reminiscent of Albert Camus’s ‘La Peste’, the varying reactions and behaviours of individuals and groups in the community, the contrast between Enlightenment rationality in deploying observation and logic to solve crimes vs the brutal torture of feudal power, the role of women, the end of empire, the Greek/Turkish conflict, individuals vying for transient power, the way in which trivial incidents become hallmarks of national tradition, plus a murder mystery, all offer an intriguing mix. But then Pamuk drags it out to 700 pages, rendering much of it repetitive and dreary. Even Nobel laureates have to respect their readership, and need sharper editors.

I doubt the book had much input from an editor. It needed it.In the end I was glancing at the pages to get a feel of when I should slow down and read properly. I felt I was persevering to the end.Long long repetitions passages repeated across the book. E.g the view from the carriage by different occupants in different times as it passes through the streets. Not very variable.For a book that seems to concentrate on politics rather than characters inner thoughts and lives, it manages to hide the political nuggets in longwinded observations.My third book of his. Probably my last.

I have read many of Orhan Pamuk’s novels and have enjoyed them greatly but this novel is a disappointment and falls far short of my expectations. Is the author getting to a stage in life that writing is proving to be tiresome?At almost seven hundred pages, this novel is excessively long. During its endless rambling through the plot I couldn’t help likening it to ‘literary diarrhoea’, (my apologies to Orhan Pamuk). The continual repetition of events, occasions and places almost suggests the Mr Pamuk had organised an exercise for a small group of his students. Each student to separately compose a given section of the narrative, after which, the stories were all stitched together like a quilt. We endlessly look into walled gardens, a pair of disruptive boys always pop up to interfere with the landau’s journey, the carts are forever picking up plague victims, curious people are always hanging out of the second story windows. This repetition is tiring!Only the last fifty pages give the reader a welcome relief. This is the part where the ‘story teller’ looks back over four generations since 1901 and recounts her own recollections of personal experience and hearsay.

This is historical public health novel. The book is easy to read and contains factual history of Ottoman empire. The book plot has complex characters and there is ongoing power struggle.