Orhan Pamuk

Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk joins us in Bath to celebrate and discuss his new novel, Nights of Plague. Pamuk will be interviewed by the legendary literary editor Boyd Tonkin.

From one of the greatest storytellers alive, the author of My Name Is Red and Snow, comes a brilliant, bold new epic.

Part historical novel, part detective story, Nights of Plague transports us back one hundred years, to a fictional island in the Ottoman Empire facing the devastating consequences of a plague epidemic. What emerges is a story steeped in history and humanity that remains utterly relevant to our current world.

1901. Night draws in. With the stealth of a spy vessel, the royal ship Azizye approaches the famous vistas of Mingheria. ‘An emerald build of pink stone’. The 29th state of the ailing Ottoman Empire.

The ship carries Princess Pakize, the daughter of a deposed sultan, her doctor husband, and the Royal Chemist, Bonkowski Pasha. Each of them holds a separate mission. Not all of them will survive the weeks ahead. Because Mingheria is on the cusp of catastrophe. There are rumours of plague – rumours some in power will try to suppress. But plague is not the only killer.

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.

Pamuk is the author of many celebrated books of fiction, nonfiction, and photography. In 2003 he won the IMPAC prize for My Name is Red, and in 2006 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Boyd Tonkin is a writer, editor and critic who in 2020 was awarded the Royal Society of Literature’s Benson Medal for outstanding service to literature. His writing on literature and arts appears in international media including The Economist, The Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and Times Literary Supplement. As Literary Editor and then Senior Writer of The Independent, he re-founded the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and judged it 2001-2015. He chaired the Man Booker International Prize 2016 and served as the prize’s Special Adviser. His reader’s guide to global fiction, The 100 Best Novels in Translation, is published by Galileo.