Book Review: Nights of Plague by Orhan Pamuk

In 2006, Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 2016, he started writing a novel about an epidemic of bubonic plague on a fictional Mediterranean island set in 1901 during the waning days of the Ottoman Empire. In this novel Nights of Plague Pamuk explores the devastating and unexpected consequences of the plague. Society, religion, local and global politics, interpersonal relationships, schools, commerce—all are rearranged and put into conflict as the state and civil society grapple with whether and how to resist the spread of the disease, and to manage the dead and those left behind.

As I read Nights of Plague, I wondered over and over again that this brilliant author had created much of this work before the coronavirus pandemic happened in the real world. It is a profound testament to his understanding of human nature and human relationships that much of what I read in his historical fiction book directly parallels what I observed in my own 21^st-century society when confronted with decisions about “non-pharmaceutical interventions” (quarantine, isolation, etc.) to hamper the spread of infectious disease. The same conflicts still exist: hunger/commerce vs risk of exposure; faith vs reason; individual vs society; freedom vs state control; the need to act based on inadequate information. On Pamuk’s island, different cultural and religious groups disagree in ways eerily similar to the conflicts America experienced in 2020-21.

After reading Nights of Plague, one is almost amazed that the world didn’t experience more overt political revolutions as a result of the pandemic. Had the biology of the coronavirus been more like bubonic plague—faster, far more deadly, striking the young equally as the old—perhaps there would have been.

I could describe more about the unusual structure of Pamuk’s novel, or the historical setting, but others have done it better and more thoroughly {NYT; New Yorker; LA Times; Pamuk’s real-life political context in The Atlantic}. My aim is to alert you to the existence of this fascinating book and to recommend it to intellectually curious readers. Lest you think the subject matter too dark, I concur with reviewer Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s comment about the book in The Guardian (21 Sept 2022):

“For all the weight of its subject matter, its tone is lightly ironic, arch, even flippant. It has many flaws. It is repetitive; it contains far too much exposition. All the same – formally and in terms of content – it is one of the most interesting books I’ve read this year.”

Nights of Plague listing on amazon (affiliate link)

Questions? amy@amyrogers.com

Amy Rogers, MD, PhD, is a Harvard-educated scientist, novelist, journalist, and educator. Learn more about Amy’s science thriller novels at AmyRogers.com.