Orhan Pamuk is the most famous Turkish writer and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. His latest book, 'Plague Nights,' is a historical detective novel imbued with the atmosphere of an Eastern fairy tale; it combines the most contradictory themes: love and politics, religion and plague, East and West. 'Plague Nights' not only immerses the reader in the distant past but also mercilessly illuminates the present day. The book is set on a small Mediterranean island, home to both Greek (Orthodox) and Turkish (Islamic) populations. The tranquility of this paradise is shattered by the arrival of a terrible disease—the plague. To suppress it, and on another, secret mission, an epidemiologist arrives on the island with his wife, the niece of Sultan Abdul Hamid II. However, not everyone on the island is prepared to follow doctor's orders and quarantine measures, because everything is in the hands of Allah, and resisting this will can be mortally dangerous...