Review of NIGHTS OF PLAGUE by Orhan Pamuk (New Release)

 3 Stars

This is my first book by this Turkish, Nobel Prize-winning writer, so I don’t know if it’s representative of his work, but I found it somewhat tedious.

The setting is 1901 on the fictional Eastern Mediterranean island of Mingheria which is part of the Ottoman Empire.  A plague has broken out so a quarantine expert, Bonkowski Pasha, is sent to bring the outbreak to an end.  He is murdered shortly after arrival, so the Sultan sends his niece, Princess Pakize, daughter of the brother he deposed, and her husband, Dr. Nuri, to control the spread of the plague and to discover the identity of Bonkowski Pasha’s murderer.  What follows is a detailed description of attempts to stop the plague and the social and political upheaval resulting from those attempts.

In a preface, the supposed author claims that she is writing “both a historical novel and a history written in the form of a novel.”  She has access to letters written by Princess Pakize during her time on Mingheria, but, though the novel gives the princess’s perspective of events, that of other characters is also given:  the governor of the island, Sami Pasha; Bonkowski Pasha; Dr. Nuri; the leader of her security detail, Major Kâmil; and Sheikh Hamdullah, among others.

What is noteworthy is the world-building.  Readers cannot but be convinced that Mingheria exists because we are told about its history, geography, economics, and politics.  The island’s ethnic (Greek, Turkish, Mingherian) and religious (Muslim, Orthodox Christian) groups are detailed.  Businesses, buildings, and streets in the capital of Arkaz are described.

The effects of the plague on the island’s residents are detailed but so are the measures taken to control its spread.  What I found especially interesting is that many of those measures are identical to those we recently faced with our own pandemic:  distancing, isolation, quarantine, alcohol-based disinfectants, closing businesses, suspending religious gatherings, restricting the size of gatherings, ventilation, curfews, and masking.  Dr. Nuri admits “how frighteningly vague the medical community’s understanding of the plague was.”

The concerns expressed read like those we heard during Covid:  “There were also people who were exposed to the microbe that didn’t fall ill or even realize they had it” and “the hospitals will run out of beds, and there won’t be enough doctors to deal with the sick” and shops “stationed someone at their door to spray disinfectant” and “plague victims might cough in your face at any moment and infect you too” and ever-changing “new measures were added every day” and “’Do you think the plague can be passed through food?’ and “the fear of the disease meant that nobody was really greeting and embracing each other” and “many other diseases had similar symptoms” and “Personal bonds had weakened, friendships had suffered” and “need to disinfect or sanitize things like paper, letters, and books” and whether the disease will disappear with the arrival of a new season.

The reactions of the people to the measures are also identical to those seen in the last couple of years.  Some worry about the effect of closures on their businesses, “complaining that quarantine was damaging their profits”; some “mothers and fathers could not stay at home to look after [children]”; and “some shopkeepers and bakers had taken to stockpiling goods, while others were hiking up their prices.”  Some people follow the rules, “never left their homes anymore, and wouldn’t come in for work,” while others are plague deniers who continue to live as normal.  Some flout the rules.  Some believe they will be immune if they carry prayer sheets or wear amulets or perform certain rituals.  There are rumours and conspiracy theories about the origins of the plague; the doctors who come to the island to help are accused of bringing the plague with them.  Politicians, medical professionals, and citizens disagree about what measures need to be taken, and protests against plague measures are held.  People who flee the city to a rural region “were quickly driven away by locals who accused them of having the plague.”  Human nature seems not to have changed, and we seem not to have learned from history.

At 700+ pages, this is a lengthy book.  Its slow pace meant I often struggled to maintain interest.  There is a great deal of telling, as opposed to showing, and many digressions.  More than once the author makes comments like “Our readers must not think that we are straying too far from our story if we too take a moment now to examine . . .” and has characters deliver “a needlessly elaborate disquisition.”  Irrelevant information is included.  For instance, when the governor’s armoured landau is first described, do we really need to know that “he had commissioned Bald Kudret, Arkaz’s most famous blacksmith to make the required sheets of armor”?  Do we have to be told about a bee that flies into the landau on one trip?  What is the purpose of being told about the ships that blockade the harbour:  “the French Amiral Baudin, launched in 1883, was one hundred meters long; the British HMS Prince George, launched in 1895, was excellent in artillery”?  Do we have to know that a judge “had long, slender fingers, and delicate handwriting”?  There is such a thing as too much information!

There is a lot of needless repetition.  Almost every time Dr. Nuri appears, his complete title is given:  Prince Consort Doctor Nuri.  Another character’s felt hat is mentioned 25 times.  Sentences are sometimes overly long:  “The judge (and former kadı) who would have ordinarily conducted the trial was Muzaffer Effendi, sent from Istanbul to handle important cases involving murder, serious injury, the abduction of young women for marriage, and blood feuds, without these having to be referred to the courts in the Empire’s capital, but Muzaffer Effendi was currently in the Maiden’s Tower, having been sent there by rowboat in the middle of the night along with the insufficiently revolutionary mayor of Teselli, Rahmetullah Effendi, so instead Sami Pasha had the elderly Christofi Effendi of the rich Yannisgiorgis family, whom he knew through the French consul, and who happened to be the only person on the island who’d studied law in Europe (specifically in Paris), brought to the former State Hall and current Ministerial Headquarters in his armored landau, instructing him upon his arrival to kindly produce a judgment ‘in the European style.’”  I count 148 words in that one sentence.

The book is critical of politicians of every stripe.  The governor pays for his landau “with money taken from the municipality’s eternally underfunded coffers”; another leader, rather than focusing on the plague, is concerned “to see this own likeness and the landscapes of Mingheria reproduced on these postage stamps” and “fantasizing about all the new names he was going to give these places”; and another “spent more time discussing [a predecessor’s] funeral arrangements, the future of the Halifiye sect and lodge, and the emblems of the Queen.”  There is certainly a criticism of modern Turkey:  “We should also note that the custom of gunning journalists and writers down on the street with the tacit backing of the state – a tradition that has now persisted for more than a hundred years – was first born under the new regime of ‘freedom.’”  (There is no doubt that the plague also serves as a metaphor for the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.)

The book has 79 chapters and an overlong epilogue.  (I found it rather ironic that in Chapter 56, only two-thirds of the way through the book, the author states, “as we approach the end of our novel-cum-history, I suppose I should finally reveal . . . “)  I finished it only because I felt obligated to do so since I received a galley from the publisher in return for a review.  It is too long and dense and perhaps, for me, too much a reminder of the Covid pandemic which has not yet ended.

Note:  I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.