Orhan Pamuk, the renowned master storyteller, takes readers on a mesmerizing journey through time and intrigue in his latest novel, "Nights of Plague." Set in the early 20th century against the backdrop of the ailing Ottoman Empire, this gripping tale intertwines themes of political turmoil, disease, and the fragility of power.

The narrative unfolds aboard the royal ship Aziziye, which approaches the stunning vistas of Mingheria, the 29th state of the Ottoman Empire. On board are Princess Pakize, the daughter of a deposed sultan, her doctor husband, and the enigmatic Royal Chemist, Bonkowski Pasha. Each character carries their own mission, their own secrets. As the ship navigates the treacherous waters, rumours of plague loom, while hidden agendas and power struggles emerge.

Pamuk's exquisite prose paints a vivid picture of Mingheria, an island on the verge of catastrophe. The author's meticulous attention to detail transports readers to the opulent landscapes and decadent courts of the Ottoman Empire, immersing them in the sights, sounds, and tensions of the era. The descriptive passages are rich and evocative, creating an atmospheric backdrop for the unfolding drama.

At its core, "Nights of Plague" is a thrilling mystery, with passion, fear, scandal, and murder weaving a web of intrigue. Pamuk skillfully balances multiple narrative threads and an extensive cast of characters, each with their own motivations and secrets. The resulting tapestry of interwoven stories captivates readers, offering a multidimensional exploration of human nature and the lengths to which individuals will go to protect their own interests.

The novel's historical backdrop provides a compelling foundation for the plot, offering insights into the social and political dynamics of the time. Pamuk expertly weaves real-world events and historical figures into the narrative, adding depth and authenticity to the story. This blending of fact and fiction enhances the reading experience, engaging both history enthusiasts and lovers of literary fiction alike.

Pamuk's writing style is poetic and introspective, encouraging readers to reflect on broader themes beyond the immediate plot. Through the characters' struggles and the empire's precarious state, he explores the ephemeral nature of power, the consequences of unchecked ambition, and the ever-present specter of mortality. "Nights of Plague" is more than a historical thriller; it is a philosophical examination of the human condition.

While the novel's intricate plot and richly drawn characters contribute to its allure, some readers may find that the narrative's complexity occasionally slows the pace. Additionally, the sheer number of characters and their individual storylines may require careful attention from the reader to fully appreciate the nuances of their relationships and motivations.

"Nights of Plague" is a captivating and enthralling novel that showcases Orhan Pamuk's mastery of storytelling. With its blend of historical accuracy, mystery, and philosophical contemplation, it stands as a testament to the enduring power of literature. Fans of Pamuk's previous works, as well as readers seeking an immersive and thought-provoking narrative, will find this book a compelling addition to their library.

The world created in this book is a testament to Pamuk's knowledge of history and culture of the start of 20th century. I loved his writing style in the previous books of his I've read, but here it just seemed a bit too slow for the plot it was trying to show. I will however keep reading Pamuk's books since he is one of the rare wirters outside the Anglocentric world that is given prominence by the international publishers.

I've enjoyed the author's previous novels and this is a similarly well written and atmospheric novel. The author excels at descriptive passages and I found this to be an immersive read. The weakness for me was the length of the novel which was overlong and drawn out.
However, overall this was an enjoyable read. 3.5 stars.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this digital ARC.

Night draws in

The year is 1901; as the Ottoman Empire falls apart Bubonic Plague threatens the island of Mingheria, a province shared equally by Christian Greek and Moslem Turk, lying somewhere between Crete and Cyprus. As well as plague there is murder of an Ottoman doctor sent by the Sultan himself to take charge of the island’s quarantine; in addition a niece of the Sultan and her new husband are sent to investigate the murder; a worldly governor, a shrewd spy-master, a sly fundamentalist scholar, a westernised soldier, and an emerging independence movement add to the mix of Pamuk’s engaging and very entertaining historical fantasy.

Or is it Pamuk’s novel. The conceit is that this is a fictional history or an historical fiction, written by one Mina Mingher, a descendant of one of the novel’s protagonists, who happens to have consulted the noted novelist and history fanatic, Orhan Pamuk, when writing the story. An epic, then, but one with its tongue firmly in its cheek, allusive and deceptive, filled with death on the one hand, and a Ruritanian revolution on the other, its characters carried along in the flow, creatures of circumstance, victims of nature.

This is the first book I’ve read by Turkish author Orhan Pamuk, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006. It sounded fascinating – a murder mystery set on a fictional Mediterranean island during an outbreak of plague at the turn of the 20th century. However, it wasn’t quite what I was expecting!

It would be easy to assume that this was a book written in response to the Covid pandemic (I certainly did), but it seems that Pamuk actually started work on Nights of Plague in 2016. Obviously now that we’ve all had experience of living through a pandemic, that element of the novel has taken on new relevance, but it’s made clear that the illness described in the book is a form of bubonic plague rather than a respiratory virus like Covid, so the causes, symptoms, methods of transmission and outcomes are very different. On the other hand, there are also lots of parallels – in 1901, just like in 2020, with no vaccine available the only way to really tackle the progress of the disease is through quarantine and isolation. People protest against the restrictions, members of government break their own rules, and while the crisis brings some communities together it creates division in others.

The fictional island at the heart of all of this is Mingheria, an outpost of the Ottoman Empire with a population made up of both Turkish Muslims and Greek Christians. The governor, Sami Pasha, is doing his best to implement quarantine measures on the island but they are having little effect and he is being held back by having to wait for official orders from the Sultan in Istanbul. As the novel opens, a ship is on its way to Mingheria from Istanbul carrying the Sultan’s niece Princess Pakize, her husband Doctor Nuri, and the Royal Chemist, Bonkowski Pasha. Bonkowski’s job is to investigate the outbreak of plague, but before he is able to draw any conclusions he is murdered.

With Bonkowski Pasha dead, it’s now up to Doctor Nuri to give advice on quarantine arrangements, while also looking into the circumstances of the chemist’s murder. The Sultan, who has become a fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, sends instructions that he must use ‘the methods of Sherlock Holmes’. There’s the basis of an exciting story here – yet the mystery element is virtually abandoned until much later in the novel and even when we return to it, it turns out not to be all that exciting after all. Much more time is spent describing the plague and the attempts to get the outbreak under control. With Covid in mind, I found this quite interesting to read about, but the book is written in such a factual and impersonal style it might as well have been non-fiction. There’s a reason for the dry style – we are told at the beginning that the whole book is supposed to be a history of Mingheria compiled by a modern day historian based on letters sent by Princess Pakize to her sister – but it means the book isn’t much fun to read, there’s not a lot of dialogue and there are pages and pages of exposition.

I felt that what Orhan Pamuk was really trying to do was tell the story of the final years of the Ottoman Empire through the lens of Mingheria’s plague response and the political change that follows on the island as a result. He has a lot to say about national identity, the reclaiming of the Mingherian language (almost forgotten as those who once spoke it grow old and die), the challenges of breaking away from rule by a larger power and the tensions between different religious groups who share the same small island.

So, lots of interesting ideas and themes in this book, but I can’t say that I particularly enjoyed reading it. It was far too long and slow and needed some editing, in my opinion. Ekin Oklap’s translation seemed fine – I think my problems were due to the overall style and pace of the book. I did become quite immersed in it after a while, but I was pleased to reach the end and I think a non-fiction book about the fall of the Ottoman Empire might have been a better use of my time! I don’t know whether this novel is typical of Orhan Pamuk’s work but I’m not really tempted to read any more just yet.

This was a massively descriptive novel which is well written with a compelling sotry and well developed characters. This period of history and the plague that split the country in many ways, wasn't very well known to me but it was such an interesting and at times heartbreaking read. I really enjoyed it.

My thanks to the publishers for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Nights of Plague’ by Orhan Pamuk. It was translated from the Turkish by Ekin Oklap, who has translated a number of his previous novels.

Six years ago Orhan Pamuk, recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature, began writing this novel 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.

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 strong contender for the 2023 International Booker Prize.

On publication, I purchased both its print and unabridged audiobook editions as it is a novel that I expect I shall revisit to appreciate its multiple layers and themes.

Nights of Plague is filled with the vibrant richness that a reader would expect from a book by Orhan Pamuk. It draws you in to the turmoil endured on the island of Mingheria at the dawn of the twentieth century and the death of the Ottoman empire. The catalyst for the tale is the rapid spread of the plague through the island which divides the populace in terms of religion, political allegiance and personal interest. At 700+ pages the descriptive nature of the prose can at times feels overbearing, but the protagonists' twists and turns keep the reader captivated.
This, coupled with the narrative being written as a pseudo history of the island, is a clever device to elevate the storyline further, resulting in a satisfyingly indulgent book..

It took a long time for me to get into this book (66%) it would have been improved if it had been edited to be not so lengthy. There are likeable characters, but I feel that it is just too soon to be writing about a pandemic as we're still in a pandemic.
My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for sending me a digital copy of the book for review.

I was looking forward to this but I found it a little dry. There is a lot of history, politics, geography, medical information etc that gets in the way of the story. I'm sure all of this is important but, for me, not at the expense of the actual narrative. It seemed to take ages to get going and though I desperately wanted to stick with it, I just couldn't force myself to keep reading.

Nights of Plague by Orhan Hamuk

This is an extraordinary and sprawling novel, ostensibly about the outbreak of plague on a fictional Mediterranean island in 1901 but it could also be about the slow decline of the Ottoman Empire, public attitudes to Covid-19, the emerging competition between the great powers which led to the First World War, and there are even echoes of the French Revolution! Just to make it more complicated, the 'narrator', Mina Mingher, is meant to be writing a historical account based on contemporary letters.

The story opens with the arrival of a boat containing a princess with an odd history, Princess Pakize, her doctor husband, Nuri Bey, and a senior health official, Bonkowski Pasha. Originally bound for China to look at new developments in medicine, the Princess and the doctor as well as Bonkowski are diverted to the island of Mingheria where there has been an outbreak of a virulent form of plague.

The first thing to say is that it is a good story. The slow expansion of the plague outbreak on the island is set against the arguments between different groups in the population, and the arguments between experts over what should be done. Meanwhile, the illness spreads inexorably and everybody finds someone to blame. This is the way in which the book echoes attitudes to Covid-19 and its spread.

It doesn't take long before the outbreak is politicised, so that Muslims and Christians are set against one another while the Greek community watches on. There are attempts to fight the infections with Lysol and to rid the island of rats but every attempt to develop a systematic and coherent strategy seems to breakdown into local infighting. Meanwhile, the deaths mount.

As the plot develops, it becomes increasingly a fight for control for the island and as civilisation begins to breakdown this becomes increasingly violent. The Great Powers blockade the island to avoid the spread of the disease but do not intervene. The ending is dramatic and many of the characters from the early pages do not survive.

It's a good read but it requires some attention to track who is who and what is going on. The writer sometimes goes into additional historical comments or the background of characters while the tensions between the declining Ottoman Empire and the territorial ambitions of the British and the French at the start of the 20th century are not often explored.

However, the spread of the novel is impressive, the mix between the fictional and the real is seamless and the characters are authentic. It's worth taking time to get into the intricacies of the story making it, at times, a slow read but ultimately a rewarding one.

A Fantastic read, a thrilling page turner. I totally see why Orhan Pamuk was awarded the Nobel prize for literature.
I often skip the preface of a book, wanting to jump right into the story. I then return when I have finished the book to read it. I decided to read the preface for Nights of Plague as I have not read Orhan Pamuk before. In the preface, the author describes how the writing of the book came about, and how it is a fictionalised version of real events, with real people and real places featured in the book. It was not until half-way through the preface when the author described themselves as a woman, that I realised the novel had already begun, and that nothing I had read in the preface was fact. Probably if I had read Pamuk before I would have picked up on the subterfuge earlier, if he had made his narrator a man, I may never have realised. The novel rattles away nicely and reads very much like a popular accessible very readable history book. I was daunted by the 700 pages at first, but the writing is not heavy, and it is not a hard read. The novel is very timely, featuring a plague at its centre. Orhan Pamuk has said in interviews that the idea of using the plague as a plot device had been in his head for 40 years, and in 2016 he began the research and writing of this novel. When our pandemic hit he was nearly finished. The timing of the book may be lucky, but the book is definitely not about our plague. This book is an intriguing page turning thriller, set at the end of the Ottoman Empire. Any similarities with any modern events are purely coincidental … or are they?

I was excited to read Nights of Plague, as I had greatly enjoyed My Name is Red when I read it some years ago. However, I was disappointed to find that the novel just didn't grip me, and I had to DNF it at around 50%. The historical setting was excellently done and I did love the meta-textual layers of fictional narration as a framing device, but I had trouble connecting with the characters and feeling invested in the plot. I think this was a real case of 'It's not you, it's me', though, and I'm sure many others would really enjoy this.

Orhan Pamuk is a wonderfully imaginative storyteller. Nights of Plague takes place on the island of Mingheria, so richly imagined that you can smell the flowering linden trees and the sea and clearly picture the narrow alleys and people walking about them. The island of Mingheria is entirely fictional. It could, however, easily stand in for any of the provinces ruled over by the ‘sick man of Europe’, the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the twentieth century with its repressive regime, old traditions and, suppression of dissent.

The story takes place during a particularly bad outbreak of plague when the sultan’s envoy, sent to stop the outbreak is murdered. The sultan sends his niece, princess Pakize and her husband, quarantine expert doctor Nuri to both stop the outbreak and find the murderer while European powers, worried that the plague will spread blockade the island. Being an Ottoman princess, Pakize is confined to her rooms and spends her days writing to her sister on the mainland. In the present day, the princess’s great granddaughter Mina, a historian, uses the letters to reconstruct the history of Mingheria as an independent country, as the proclamation of independence took place during the outbreak. Pamuk explores popular foundational myths, nationalism, orthodoxy and the purpose of history itself through the rich cast of characters, from captain, later commander Kamil, the princess’s bodyguard turned leader of the newly independent country to religious leaders and petty officials.

It's taken me a while to gather thoughts about Nights of Plague, I found it engrossing but also frustrating at times, meandering and repetitive. There is a lot here I liked: the shift in atmosphere, the collective fatalism as the outbreak spreads; the playful exploration of poisons and Sherlock Holmes’ detective methods; the ‘popular’ foundational myths of the founding of Mingheria and how the powers that be exploit these stories, the parallels with today’s world. The latter is very well done and painfully familiar as I too come from a place once ruled over by the Ottomans where new foundational myths periodically replace each other.

My thanks to Netgalley and Faber and Faber for the opportunity to read Nights of Plague.

This book was originally published in Turkish in March 2021, one year after the first UK Covid lockdown. It seems fair to assume that it was mostly written pre-pandemic and perhaps tweaked after Covid began to spread worldwide. However, it has uncannily accurate depictions of the variety of reactions to a plague, and to restrictions imposed by the authorities.

The novel has been well-translated, and reads smoothly in English. Set in an almost fairy-tale location at the beginning of the last century, with a princess centre-stage, it is essentially an ingenious and unputdownable detective story, referencing Conan Doyle and Dumas. The action mostly takes place in the dying years of the Ottoman Empire, and features superpower intervention, corruption, and social and political unrest.

Although I"d heard of Orhan Pamuk, I must admit to never having read any of his books so was looking forward to becoming immersed in this one and learning more about the Ottoman Empire. The contemporary relevance of fighting a plague was a draw as well. Sadly I found it really hard going, the writing style for me seemed unnecessarily verbose, and rather than conjuring up a picture of the life and times of the characters it made me long for the end of a sentence!
Maybe it's a book I will come back to as I feel it is a story worth knowing, but certainly not in the near future.
Thank you to netgalley and Faber and Faber for an advance copy of this book

This was really moving. Thank you to the publisher for the opportunity to review this ARC via NetGalley,

Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's most famous living author, Nobel Laureate and recipient of many awards, has returned with another blisteringly good novel. And one that, despite being set at the very beginning of the twentieth century, and on a fictional [but very real] island, is incredibly relevant to today.

There is a plague. The island of Mingheria - the twenty-ninth state of the Ottoman Empire -located in the eastern Mediterranean between Crete and Cyprus, is our setting and we open with a little bit of clever meta-narrative before plunging into the story.

Pamuk brings to life this world in vivid detail. I could see and hear and smell this place; the details in Pamuk's writing really make his work swell with beauty. For such a long novel, this one flew by for me. At the end it was the minor characters, the little details that lingered in the memory.

Thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the ARC.

This book is about Princess Pakize, daughter of a deposed sultan, her husband, and the Royal Chemist, Bonkowski Pasha, as they travel to Mingheria amid an outbreak of plague. I can’t really tell you much more than that, because I didn’t get very far before giving up on it.

My issue is with the writing style. Keep in mind that I was reading an English translation, so I don’t know if this was a translation issue or if the original story was written in the same way, but I couldn’t get on board with at at all. The author has tried to combine a historical piece with a novel, and I personally don’t think it has worked. The writing is much too heavy and would certainly work better in a specialist historical textbook than in a hist-fic novel. I was about eight chapters in (which isn’t far, because this is a long book) when I realised I had absorbed exactly nothing and had no idea who was who or what any of them were doing. I got absolutely no enjoyment from reading this book, and so decided to spare myself and not continue.

Perhaps this novel would be better suited to more enthusiastic readers of historical fiction than me.

Orhan Pamuk has produced an epic novel, that in many ways belies description ; it would appear he seeks to use the context of a plague on a fictional Greek,island to explore the state of our wider world in particular during the era of Covid. Pamuk is a legendary writer and the precision detail he provides to describe the minutiae of politics and the Machiavellian ways in which men wish to exploit society for their own power is extraordinary. The story initially focuses around three characters ;Princess Pakize, the daughter of a deposed sultan,;her husband - Doctor Nuri-and the Royal Chemist, Bonkowski Pasha and their arrival on the island of Mingheria but following the murder of Bonkowski Pasha, the Princess and her husband are compeled to stay on the island to,help with the impending crisis of a plague and the resulting political upheaval between Muslims and Christians and factions within the political society. The tale is told as though recounting a true historical event mak’h references to diaries kept by the Princess. There is a sense of reading Garcia- Marquez in the way sub characters and their subsequent lives intertwine around the main plot. This is not an “easy “ read in that it demands attention and the intricacy of plotting the overall narrative is complex but ultimately rewarding .Pamuk is an extraordinary writer who clearly wants to use his craft to express a broader message or reflection upon modern life- and in this novel, he truly succeeds