When Orhan Pamuk was asked last year whether he thought it was strange that his novel about an epidemic Nights of the Plague came out during the corona pandemic, he answered: "When I began four and a half years ago, my friends asked me why I was writing a novel on an obscure subject… The plague was gone and humanity had left these ugly things behind. I started to believe them, but I was determined to write this novel. So no, I did not anticipate this pandemic, but there is no history of humanity without pandemics.” Nights of the Plague takes place on Minger Island, during a plague epidemic in 1901. Sultan Abdülhamit seals off the island to prevent further spread. But is the death of a health inspector a random murder or part of a bigger plan? The sultan asks his niece and her husband to go to the island and find out. Pamuk was born in Istanbul in 1952. His first novel won many prizes in Turkey. His breakthrough in Turkey and the rest of the world came with The Black Book. His The New Life, My name is Red, Snow, and The Museum of Innocence were also lauded. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages, and in 2006 Pamuk won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The two Dutch translators of Pamuk, Margreet Dorleijn and Hanneke van der Heijden, will receive the Martinus Nijhoff Vertaalprijs this year, the most important Dutch award for translators.