An empire crumbles: Nights of Plague, by Orhan Pamuk, reviewed

Welcome to Mingheria, ‘pearl of the Levant’. On a spring day, as the 20th century dawns, you disembark at this ‘calm and charming island’ south of Rhodes from a comfortable steamer after sailing from Smyrna, Piraeus or Alexandria. A crew of Greek or Muslim boatmen will row you to the picturesque harbour of Arkaz, flanked by the radiant White Mountain and the gloomy turrets of the medieval castle.

The fragrances of honeysuckle, linden trees and the famous Mingherian roses waft over azure seas. Admire the ancient churches and newer mosques, the neo-classical State Hall, the grand buildings funded by the sultan’s government in faraway Istanbul. Savour figs, oil, nuts and cheeses in the bustling markets. As for those rumours of banditry by Orthodox or Islamist renegades in the bare hills: mischievous tittle-tattle. Infection? You’ll find no disease here…

Orhan Pamuk began writing his tenth novel in 2016. In 2020, reality caught up with Turkey’s Nobel laureate. Nights of Plague chronicles eight months of pestilence, lockdown and dread on a fictitious Aegean island. In 1901, an outbreak of plague scourges its people – equal numbers of Christians and Muslims – while the tottering, panicky Ottoman state loses its grip.

‘Thank heaven life can at last return to normal.’

In his novels of Istanbul past and present, Pamuk relishes meticulous, immersive world-building. He remakes the city street by street, smell by smell, brick by brick. Over 700 pages, he does the same for imaginary Mingheria. His dream island hosts a ‘three-dimensional fairy tale’ – the backdrop for a densely crosshatched parable not just of an epidemic and its outcomes but nationalism, modernity and group identity. Along the way, he uncovers ‘mysterious links… between history and objects, and nations and writing’.