From the mid-nineteenthand century, the Ottoman Empire began to be referred to as the “sick man of Europe”. Especially in the sense that it was Europe itself, through the modern ideas of progress and freedom that it exported, which constituted the disease for the Ottoman power.
A “disease” that precipitated the slow agony of this immense multicultural empire, caught between Western imperialism and the awakening of minorities until its implosion in 1918, at the end of the First World War.
And it is in the heart of an empire on the decline that we plunge plague nightsthe 11thand novel by Nobel-winning Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk. Fueled by the rich tensions between East and West, as is often the case with Pamuk, this massive novel recounts in abundant detail an epidemic of the plague — a disease which had reappeared five years earlier in China — which struck in 1901. the imaginary island of Mingher, “pearl of the eastern Mediterranean”, located somewhere between Rhodes and Crete.
Two medical specialists were sent there from Istanbul by Sultan Abdülhamid II, including Doctor Nuri, recently married to Princess Pakizê, one of the nieces of the last absolute monarch in Ottoman history. 116 years after the events, from the many letters addressed to her family by the princess, it is a young woman herself born in Mingher, Mîna Mingherli, who takes charge of the narration of this “novel-story” which balances between the somewhat soft thriller and the historical chronicle.
Very soon after their arrival in Mingher, assassinations and natural deaths will follow. And since the plague never comes alone, other scourges will threaten stability: the denial of the authorities and the population – especially merchants -, as well as the sometimes violent resistance to quarantine and sanitary measures.
On this multicultural island, where Muslims and Orthodox have always cohabited, clashes between religious communities will also resurface, an old flame fueled by a little conspiracy. It is in this context that will spread on the island, which has become a veritable political powder keg, the bacillus of the revolution. It’s hard not to see the microcosm of the empire, a big sick body in the process of disintegrating.
The author of the amazing My name is red (1998), born in 1952, has often been inspired by the Ottoman period. As in The white castle (Gallimard, 1996), which recounted the passionate relationship between a Venetian slave and a Turkish intellectual in the 17and century both trying (well, well) to eradicate a plague epidemic.
Despite the fact that most of the characters lack density, plague nights is a rich historical fresco with a slow and meticulous narration. A kind of book-universe where reality and fiction mingle through which Orhan Pamuk probes the fear of death, the limits and the vanities of power. And as with Camus or Defoe with his Journal of the Plague Year (1722), the epidemic put the community spirit to the test there and serves to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of men and empires alike.
Started in 2016, says Orhan Pamuk, this ambitious novel has been overtaken almost prophetically by current events. It speaks of yesterday, but also of today: of a country torn between the Muslim tradition and the Western model, both blessed and cursed by its geography shared between two worlds. Fascinating, but perhaps a little heavy.