East West Dichotomy in Orhan Pamuk’s Nights of Plague

Abstract

Orhan Pamuk has explored the rich traditional past of Turkey in his fiction in detail. In Nights of Plague he revisits his favourite trope of East West dichotomy. A fictional island of Mingheria serves as the background of action. The bubonic plague is seen differently from the perspectives of different characters. The story is set in 1901 when the Ottoman Empire was fading. The multi layered narrative gives a detailed account of how a society deals with a pandemic. The crisis posed by plague is a threat to the existing authority. The Sultan tries to manage the challenge posed by plague by sending a delegation to the island of Mingheria. The existential threat is dealt with differently by various characters.