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Nights of Plague
by Orhan Pamuk
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In April 1900, plague reaches Mingheria, a fictional Ottoman island between Crete and Cyprus whose population is divided between Muslims and Orthodox Christians. The sultan sends quarantine specialist Bonkowski Pasha, followed by Princess Pakize and her physician husband Nuri. When the expert is murdered, Nuri is ordered to continue the quarantine and discover who killed the man responsible for containing the epidemic.
Resistance to public-health restrictions, religious hostility and administrative incompetence allow the disease to spread until foreign warships blockade the island. Officer Kamil and other local figures turn survival into a movement for political independence, creating myths and institutions while deaths continue. The novel combines a murder investigation with an account of epidemic government, nationalism and the dissolution of Ottoman authority.
Historical periods
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