Turkey’s foremost contemporary writer has had to explain many times that he started writing his most recent novel three years before the world had ever heard of COVID-19. He does say, however, that he revised Nights of Plague with COVID-19 in mind. My only frustration with the novel was not knowing which parts he had revised. Orhan Pamuk, in interviews about his latest 700-page novel, refers to how scared we all were when COVID-19 emerged and how some of that reaction informed his writing. I strongly suspect that Pamuk was ‘COVID orthodox’ in that he seems to have approved of the measures taken, and I detect no word of criticism about them in his interviews or in Nights of Plague. This enormous book is also not Pamuk’s first work to feature a plague; it was a prominent feature of one of his previous novels The White Castle.
Pamuk is a masterful writer. His books all open in such a way that you know they are going to be hard to put down. That said, his novels range from the convoluted magical realism of My Name is Red, on which many have given up after a few chapters, to his much more lucid recent works such as A Strangeness in My Mind and The Red-Haired Woman. His novels, including Nights of Plague are not strictly historical novels but they are political, and he has suffered under the present Turkish regime on this account.
Pamuk is supremely capable of blurring the line between fact and fiction. He creates a separate reality so well that you are drawn in to his imaginary world. He is very convincing, and his masterstroke was the co-creation of his novel The Museum of Innocence and the building of a physical Museum of Innocence in one of the backstreets of Istanbul. In that light, fact is so cleverly interwoven with fiction in Nights of Plague, where he creates a fictional island of Mingheria off the coast of Turkey; you almost believe it exists.
Like many Pamuk novels, Nights of Plague is partly a detective story. Plague breaks out on Mingheria and Bonkowski Pasha, the Sultan’s Royal Chemist, is sent to Mingheria to investigate. His mutilated body is soon found on a backstreet of the island. Another senior official is poisoned, and the murders are linked. But—also a feature of Pamuk’s writing—you easily forget about the murders as the novel descends into the depths and details of plague management. The novel is set at the turn of the 20th century when the nature of infections and the causative agents were only beginning to be understood. At that time there were still leading figures who adhered to the theory of spontaneous generation whereby rats simply appeared in rubbish heaps, infection arose similarly if conditions were right in the human body and spread was accomplished by miasma. A leading figure in Turkish history, Florence Nightingale, was an adherent of the theory of spontaneous generation.
At a time when scientists and doctors were still debating the issue, the general population was even more confused, and superstitions arose about the origins of plague and the best ways to treat it. The parallels with the current debate about the origins of COVID-19 and the origins of the plague are not lost on the reader. Many on Mingheria believed that the plague had been introduced deliberately by the Turkish authorities and many had no faith in the enforced measures. Indeed, in the case of the Muslim population, the preparation of bodies for burial under plague regulations, by washing with lime solution, conflicted with their beliefs. There was no cure for the plague and only some temporary relief by lancing the painful buboes that arose on victims’ bodies. The lack of effective medicine gave rise to a host of alternatives including prayers, blessing, amulets, and incantations all of which purportedly protected against the plague.
A major plank of the strategy to contain the plague was quarantine. Victims were rounded up and quarantined until they died. Plague infected houses were boarded up and anyone in contact with plague victims was likewise rounded up and quarantined. Businesses were closed, food shortages arose and, of course, people rebelled. This eventually led to a revolution, with Mingheria declaring independence from Turkey. The new regime still had to manage the plague.
To enforce the plague restrictions, a quarantine regiment was formed to patrol the streets. The parallels with the economic and social lockdowns imposed in 2020-2021 and the employment of the frankly ridiculous COVID marshals by many local authorities in the United Kingdom are striking. The parallels continue with the suspicions that the plague, which was known as bubonic and spread by contact or proximity, had become airborne or pneumonic. Some people covered up their faces to avoid the likelihood of becoming infected. The only difference between then and now is that then it was not enforced.
Running through the novel are the fortunes of several people. One major figure is the Commander and, following the revolution, President, who is in charge of plague measures. He keeps his beautiful wife Zeynep quarantined but discovers during their lovemaking that she has a raised red area in her groin. It then transpires that she has broken the quarantine and visited relatives, much to his fury. The description of her death from the plague is detailed and harrowing and inevitably he also dies. Another major character is Princess Pakize. She arrived on the island at the start of the plague and was unable to leave. She is married to another character who becomes involved in managing the plague, Princess Consort Dr Nuri. They survive the plague, and it becomes apparent that the novel is in fact an account being written by their great granddaughter. Through the mechanism of Princess Pakize, who is an Ottoman Princess, we learn a great deal about the machinations of the Ottoman Empire, then in its fin de siècle.
Thus, like all Pamuk novels, this is a multifaceted story. Against the background of the plague, we have a murder mystery, a revolution, religious strife, and much more that are beyond the limits of a review to describe. Suffice to say that, in writing this novel, the author seemed to have all the time in the world and the reader is taken on some lengthy and highly descriptive detours. But the urge to keep turning the pages never wanes. Pamuk is also a meticulous researcher, and this is almost a treatise on the contemporary consensus regarding how to manage a plague. Of course there were early experiments with vaccines since 1890 referred to by Pamuk, which did not work, and this was long before the development of antibiotics which are now effective against plague.
After many months, the plague ends and restrictions are lifted and the first part of the story ends. The book is then completed with a lengthy final section titled “Many Years Later” which is written as a single chapter. The identity of the writer, already glimpsed during the novel, is fully revealed and she completes the story of what happened to Princess Pakize and Dr Nuri. Copious reference is made throughout the novel to historical documents and archives in Mingheria, Istanbul, and other places which were, purportedly, used to create the story. Not for the first time in his novels, Orhan Pamuk writes himself into the script as a history enthusiast to whom the fictional writer compares herself. It is eminently possible that Pamuk is busy creating the records on which the book is supposed to be based.
From a look at the many reviews already published, it’s clear that there are as many interpretations of Nights of Plague as there are reviewers. Is Mingheria a microcosmic representation of Istanbul? Are the slightly ridiculous revolutionaries on the island the Young Turks or is this a precursor to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s later revolution on the mainland? Are there lessons to be learned about modern plague (i.e., COVID-19) management? Or is this simply a study of what men can do to men and how love, lust, and greed carry on regardless when people are facing a common and existential threat? These points will be discussed for years, but I am certain that this is Pamuk’s magnum opus; it is also his finest book to date.
