We remain forbidden to read this 11and novel by Orhan Pamuk whose writing began before the pandemic. The Nobel Prize for Literature relates… the difficulties of imposing health measures on an imaginary island in the Mediterranean ravaged by the plague in 1901. Three years after starting his book, the COVID-19 crisis was beginning! A novel about pain, freedom and extremism, plague nights mixes fiction and history of Turkey at the time of the Ottoman Empire.
Posted at 6:00 p.m.
This long novel – 690 pages – takes place in the Turkish island of Mingher. We are looking on a map. We find nothing. Does the author mean Karpathos, in the Aegean Sea, where a village is called Arkaza, like Arkaz, the fictional capital of Mingher? Never mind. The island does not exist, but the story is reminiscent of an episode in Marseille in 1901. A boat leaving for the Orient had to dock at the Frioul Islands, off Marseille, because of a case of plague. on board.
However, there was never a plague pandemic in 1901. The author created this drama in particular to evoke the decline of the Ottoman Empire. Founded in 1299, it extended its influence around the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, and from the Arabian Peninsula to the gates of Morocco, until 1922. plague nights takes place in the midst of the decline of this sultanate allergic to modernity and the freedom that were upsetting Europe at the time.
Orhan Pamuk warns, with humor, from the start, that this mixture of reality and fiction stems from 113 letters written between 1901 and 1913 by Princess Pakizê, one of the daughters of Sultan Mourad V, to her sister, Hatidjê. The princess and her doctor husband are leaving for China to intervene in the conflict between China and the West, in which Chinese Muslims are involved. But their boat is diverted to Mingher, where a case of plague is reported. The sultan’s chemist tries to solve the problem.
His determination will be in vain. The population resists, not realizing the gravity of the situation. Citizens are mowed down by the dozens. The author vilifies the blindness of the inhabitants, whether of a religious, political or economic nature. The opposition to health measures obviously brings to mind the anti-mask demonstrations in Quebec, Montreal and Ottawa in 2022. Moreover, when the novel was launched, Orhan Pamuk said he had strange feelings during the writing, when the pandemic has occurred. The impression that his story had transmitted the COVID-19 to the whole world!
plague nights is also a romance novel and a treatise on the challenges of multiculturalism. How Greek Christians and Turkish Muslims lived together in the Mediterranean. For better and for worse. And how the great European nations have long played the role of local policeman. If some passages of the novel are repetitive, the book is nonetheless a clever mix of reflections on human nature, the lack of education and the perils of authoritarianism. Unfortunately, a very current novel.
plague nights
Orhan Pamuk
Gallimard
690 pages