Shab'hā-yi Ṭā'ūn: Persian 1402

Plague Nights, which Orhan Pamuk has been working on for 5 years, takes place on the island of Minger, the 29th province of the Ottoman Empire, during the 3rd Plague Pandemic in 1901. This historical novel, which is both a gripping novel of politics and love and where Pamuk discusses the issues of epidemic, quarantine, state, and individual with the atmosphere of a fairy tale, also sheds light on the days we live in with its subject. When a plague epidemic broke out on Minger Island, the 29th province of the Ottoman Empire, in the spring of 1901, Sultan Abdülhamit first sent the Chief Health Inspector, chemist Bonkowski Pasha, and then the young and successful Doctor Nuri to the island to stop the epidemic. The sultan recently married the young doctor to Pakize Sultan, the daughter of the previous sultan Murat V, whose elder brother was imprisoned in the palace, and Pakize Sultan accompanied her husband on this journey. On the island are the young and nationalist Ottoman officer Kolağası Kâmil, the islander Zeynep with whom he is in love, Governor Sami Pasha who is trying to keep up with everything, and his beautiful girlfriend Marika. Plague Nights is the story of these people, who strive to obey the quarantine bans, and their struggles with the plague, the traditions on the island, and eventually with each other and death threats, and the love experiences they experience. "Pamuk is the greatest living writer." -Le Point, France "Pamuk is a unique writer who wrote his best books after Nobel." -The Independent, England "He is neither an ideologue, nor a politician, nor a journalist. Orhan Pamuk is a great novelist." -The New York Times, USA