Overall I enjoyed this book. The world-building is excellent and Orhan Pamuk makes great use of foreshadowing. I enjoyed the medical history and the discussion of measures taken and/or resisted in this fictional island setting. The discussion of the Ottoman Empire was also fascinating. The story-telling was interesting, with the current-day narrator looking back. However there were some downsides to the book. I found the wording needlessly complex, sometimes making the writing hard to understand or follow. I also found that the epilogue was much too long and added very little to the story. Overall though, the book is well worth reading. Thank you to Netgalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for the advance reader copy.

This is one of those it isn't you it's me type of book, although the writing was very nice, the pace of this book is very slow and it could not hold my attention. This is also a very long book at nearly 800 pages it would have taken me a very long time to finish, and I have too many on my TBR pile. I think if I was in the mood for a slow detailed story, this would be just the one I would want to read. Please don't let my opinion stop you from reading this, the author has won the Nobel Prize for literature so clearly he knows how to write. Thank you to #Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Pandemic Trigger Warning - well, it should be fairly obvious from the title!

Turkey's greatest author, Orhan. Pamuk has created a fictionalized account about a small island called Mingheria existing near Crete during the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the early 1900's. Mingheria is half Orthodox Greek and half Muslim -echoing the tensions in many areas of the world we are all familiar with. When the Great
Plague begins to bear down on them, the island is locked down. First an Orthodox Greek is sent to run the quarantine, following failure a Muslim. The interest for me lay in the bureaucracy that tied any expert's hands from making progress.

It's a long novel that digresses but picks up speed midway and the end. There's quite a bit to be learned via metaphor and allusions to our own pandemic. If you have the heart for a plague novel, love amazing literature, or have a sincere interest in history told outside of the U.S, Nights of Plague is for you1
#Doubleday #Knopf

Anyone not keen on reliving plague-induced quarantines and death may want to skip this book. Pamuk takes a very leisurely approach to his story which builds up slowly but does present a rich and rounded portrait of a small (fictional) island that is part of the failing Ottoman Empire in 1901. The plague is both a historical manifestation and also, it seems, a kind of metaphor for the collapse of an empire.

The digressive narrative packs in various lives, and also gives a fine flavour of an empire which brought together Greek, Byzantine, Turkish, Muslim and Christian cultures amongst others, and the ways in which they adhered and diverged along various axes.

The narrative purports to be a history written in 2017, just before our own pandemic, and there are all kinds of allusions to our recent history, from lockdowns, medical science and deniers, to refugees drowning at sea and washing up dead on the island's shores. The pacing is slow and even: even dramatic happenings are told in a level voice. Nevertheless, the power of the portrait accumulates as we progress through the book. A long read which becomes increasingly unputdownable.

Nights of Plague is set on the fictitious Mediterranean island of Mingheria in the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the century, a time when the Ottoman Empire was pertinently referred to as "the Sick Man of Europe". Plague has broken out on the island and the Sultan Abdul Hamid II has sent one of his top physicians to the island to control the outbreak. The physician, Bonkowski Pasha is murdered, but the suggested murder mystery dwindles away and we are left with a very information rich tale of how the plague affected this island. The murder mystery may be there as a device to show the difference between East and West: Sherlock Holmes' methods (we are told the Sultan is a fan as his his niece) contrasted with the Ottoman method of beating the prisoners feet to get a confession or information.

A plague outbreak on a far flung corner of an empire reminds me of Camus' novel La Peste (The Plague) about a plague in Algeria, (as a Wordle player, I note Camus and Pamuk, both Noble Laureates, both have five letter names sharing the same middle three letters).

The world building is amazing and the history, culture, religious conflicts, politics and geography of this island comes to life, the book gives us a lot of information about Mingheria, the Ottoman Empire and the bubonic plague. The author has clearly done his homework. The original novel was published in Turkish in the midst of the Covid Epidemic in 2021 and is due to be published in English in October of this year. This may have influenced the subject matter. There is much written about the quarantine measures and the flouting of quarantine by the inhabitants of the island. The storytelling is in the style of a true history narrated by the great granddaughter of Princess Pakize living in our own times and feels very dry and repetitive. Princess Pakize is one of the more interesting characters, she is the niece of the Sultan and comes to the island with her new husband the Prince Consort Doctor Nuri. She is used to being confined as an Ottoman Princess, so the confinement imposed by quarantine regulations isn't alien to her and a lot of the narrative is gleaned from the letters she writes to her sister Hatice.

A story of plague and revolution is going to have a high body count and like a George R R Martin story many principle characters are killed off in the course of the story. The pacing is quite uneven, there is a strong start, followed by a languid and repetitive middle as the plague counts get worse and then quite a rushed ending (not counting the overlong epilogue). This book lacks the mystery and emotional depth of Pamuk's greater novels like My Name is Red or Snow. Maybe this was what Pamuk wanted, it reads like a history book, we don't get into the feelings of fear of the Mingherians faced with this plague, the feelings we might expect expressed in a novel.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers Knopf for an advanced reader copy, I leave this review voluntarily.

This book starts with the plague spreading through the small island of Mingheira, which is part of the Ottoman Empire. As the book goes on, both the quarantine and plague situation and the political consequences develop.

There are a few character we follow, especially royalty and doctors, but they are not the main point. This is not a book about plot and characters, but about the atmosphere of the plague and the social and political unrest. I believe this was mostly written before the pandemic of COVID 19, but some of the events and sentiments resonate with things we have lived through recently.

The writing is descriptive without being flowery, but it also sometimes felt like it was going on in circles. The narrator is a historian with ties to the island, so it sometimes broke the fourth wall, talking directly to the reader, which I enjoyed. However, it also sometimes made it a bit dry. And the epigraph was out of place, the way it was written felt like a completely different book with a comletely different approach.

Overall, there were elements of the book that I thoroughly enjoyed, but ultimately, it should have either been edited down or develop the characters more so that they can carry the story forward in a more empathic way.

This was my first book by Orhan Pamuk. It was well-written and the historic era descriptions/setting seemed spot on, but I could not get into it. It was too long for me to try to finish, but I am open to trying another of the author's works in the future. Thanks!

In NIGHTS OF PLAGUE, modern master Orhan Pamuk crafts an ornate, rich novel with profound relevance for today's reader. A slow-paced but never disappointing read--highly recommended.

This book is certainly interesting and great for analysis about humankind sadly repeating its ways throughout different cultures and moments in time. It is also a long and a heavy read, definitely one I would recommend in print version to read with sticky notes on hand, and if the pandemic doesn't still feel raw.

Interesting and informative. Flows really well and 700 pages flash by. Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book

I was intrigued by this story line, but after 100 pages I haven't for the life of me understood much of the plot. Some sentences are so long I need to read them multiple times just to understand what the author is trying to say. With 500+ more pages of this, I will likley not be finishing this book.

This was my first book by Orhan Pamuk. It was well-written, but I think I just wasn’t in the right mood for it. It was too long and too slow for me in that moment. Thank you for letting me check it out!

If you are interested in an allegory about the human response to a pandemic or epidemic with a combination of historic fiction, this might be for you. This was too long, lacked charisma, lacked energy. I had to push myself to finish it. Somewhat interesting - maybe did not translate well.

Orhan Pamuk and has admittedly spent a fair amount of time on my mental “to-read” list as someone whose works seemed to be up my alley, yet I never really took the time to actually give a try - until now, finally. I don’t know whether “Nights of Plague” is representative of his other works, but what I do know is that I found it to be quite enjoyable. Reading about the attempts to stem a spreading plague across the imaginary island of Mingheria and the various backlash against it made for quite a lot of contemplation about past and present - and a lot of realization about what has changed and what hasn’t.

I also liked that with all that was going on, “Nights of Plague” seemed to take its time with a narrative that moved more slowly than I expected given its subject matter - but not at all to its detriment. The pace matched well with the amount of information and description that Pamuk included, leading to a rich and immersive reading experience. I also think it helped that this was my first time delving into a fictional work set in the Ottoman Empire. Although Mingheria is a product of Pamuk’s imagination, it felt as real as any actual location in the empire’s waning days.

Overall, just a good and meaty historical fiction read - enjoyable by itself on its own, but has also whetted my appetite for the author’s other works.

Nights of Plague is writing well worth exploring from a contemporary literary great. The book is woven through with history that parallels current and very relevant events and questions. Highly recommended.

Nights of Plague is an upcoming historical fiction novel by one of the most renowned authors of this genre. And indeed, Pamuk did not disappoint. The words chosen for the descriptions and characters are vivid. In such a dark phase of world history set in 1901, the author manages to pop out elements of color and specks of bold.
It is set on the imaginary Mediterranean island of Minger, where there has been an outbreak of the Bubonic plague. Not only does this help us get an insight into what those men underwent, but it also informs us about the measures and precautions taken by them when there was a lack of the equipment we can so efficiently utilize today.
It was an informative, insightful, slow but proceeding read. All in all, I would rate it four stars as the descriptions did get overwhelming at times.

I have had one encounter with Orhan Pamuk and it was in reading his book, Snow, and as soon as I saw this on Netgalley I couldn't resist requesting to read it.
This book took me back and far away to a time when there was not much advancement in health and where rulers could with a remark or gesture end your life- and it's written in such a beautiful and chronological way that the events unfold and unravel in a way that is so akin to mankind.
Thanks Netgalley for the eARC.

This has been on my radar since the controversy surrounding its publication in Turkey. I was so pleased to fall in love with this book and sink into something over 700 pages again.