From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature: Part detective
story, part historical epic--a bold and brilliant novel that imagines a
plague ravaging a fictional island in the Ottoman Empire.
It is April 1900 on the imaginary island of Mingheria--a state of the
Ottoman Empire--located between Crete and Cyprus. Half the population is
Muslim, the other half are Orthodox Greeks, and tension is high between
the two. When a plague arrives, the island revolts.
To stop the epidemic, an accomplished quarantine expert races to the
island, but not everyone is happy with the precautions or the quarantine
he enforces. What follows is a shocking murder. The plague continues its
rapid spread and stricter quarantine measures are declared, but the
incompetence of the island's governor, increased hostility between the
two religions, and the people's refusal to respect the bans doom the
quarantine to failure. As the death count rises to insurmountable
amounts, warships blockade the island to keep the disease from
spreading. Now the people of Mingheria are on their own, and they must
find a way to defeat the plague themselves.
Steeped in history and rife with suspense, Nights of Plague is an epic
story set more than one hundred years ago, with themes that feel
remarkably contemporary.
