World News | 'Nights of Plague': Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk's Book to Release in September

New Delhi, Aug 23 (PTI) Turkish novelist and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk's new work of fiction, "Nights of Plague", will hit the stands next month, Penguin Random House India (PRHI) announced on Tuesday.

The book, slated to release under Penguin's 'Hamish Hamilton' imprint, is a historical novel with events that takes place in 1901 during the third plague pandemic on a fictional Ottoman island. It is currently available for pre-order online.

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"The 19th century European novel has an Eastward movement from London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, to St Petersburg.

"In my novel 'Nights of Plague', however, the action moves in a sphere that is much more Southern, and from East to West: Hong Kong, Beijing, Bombay, Alexandria, Istanbul, Crete and Venice. Indian readers will notice and enjoy this new novelistic demographic and the warmer setting," Pamuk said in a statement.

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Pamuk, who is the author of ten novels and three works of non-fiction, is the winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature.

It is April 1900, in the Levant, on the imaginary island of Mingheria -- the twenty-ninth state of the Ottoman Empire. Half the population is Muslim, the other half are Orthodox Greeks, and tension is high between the two.

When a plague arrives -- brought either by Muslim pilgrims returning from the Mecca or by merchant vessels coming from Alexandria -- the island revolts.

To stop the epidemic, the Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid II sends his most accomplished quarantine expert to the island -- an Orthodox Christian. Some of the Muslims, including followers of a popular religious sect and its leader Sheikh Hamdullah, refuse to take precautions or respect the quarantine. And then a murder occurs.

"Soon, the eyes of the world will turn to this ancient island, where the future of a fragile empire is at stake, in an epic and playful mystery of passion, fear, scandal and murder, from one of history's master storytellers," reads the description of the book.

According to the publishers, Pamuk's new novel is a "masterpiece", and the drawings and hand-drawn maps in the book add texture to its thrilling universe.

"In this part detective story and part historical fiction, Pamuk has created an imaginary world plagued by an outbreak, not very different from the one we are living in today – except he has been working on this novel for more than four years," said Meru Gokhale, publisher, Penguin Press at PRHI.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)