Presented as a historian's edition of Princess Pakize's letters, the novel follows the Ottoman-era plague outbreak of 1901 on the fictional Mediterranean island of Mingheria, where Doctor Nuri and Princess Pakize navigate quarantine measures, the murder of the Sultan's Royal Chemist Bonkowski Pasha, and the political unraveling that leads to Mingheria's revolution and declared independence under Commander Kâmil.
Books mentioned in Nights of Plague (11)
Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes: “hauled him straight to prison...where they caught him reading a book (Hobbes's Leviathan) in the garden”
The Mysteries of Paris by Eugène Sue: “did not appreciate melodramatic coincidences in his detective novels (such as in Eugène Sue's The Mysteries of Paris)”
Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle: “But what did Abdul Hamid mean by the phrase "like Sherlock Holmes"?”
The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb by Arthur Conan Doyle: “the translator...also translated the Sherlock Holmes story ("The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb")...and the Sultan had begun following its author Arthur Conan Doyle too”
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: “Princess Pakize has managed to solve the mystery of a murder...just by reading The Count of Monte Cristo!”
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: epigraph: —LEO TOLSTOY, War and Peace, translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude
The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni: epigraph: —ALESSANDRO MANZONI, The Betrothed
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert: “The famous French novel's immoral, unstable heroine Madame Bovary also committed suicide in the same manner”
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas: “The Three Musketeers had been screened at the Majestic Cinema in Arkaz this winter, but that my mother...deemed it not appropriate for my age”
Oedipus Rex by Sophocles: “the bearded lead actor of a Greek theater troupe who had come to Arkaz for a production of Oedipus Rex”
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: “living on hills and mountains and in forests, a little like Robinson Crusoe”