Nights of Plague A Conversation

The following is an edited transcript of the opening plenary session of the Institute for World Literature in July 2020 -held online as a result of Covid-19. In this conversation with IWL's director and associate director, Orhan Pamuk discusses his understanding of world literature and his place in it, and his ongoing work on his novel Nights of Plague, then nearing completion.

Psychosocial aspects of mountain residents in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic

While physical distance, relative isolation and lower population density play in favor for rural areas in terms of the direct impact of COVID-19, as the contagion spreads rural areas are increasingly hard hit. Rural inhabitants have dramatically less access to adequate health services, education, internet and communications technology, social protection and public infrastructure. People with health conditions are more likely to be infected and affected by the virus, and poor populations often have higher rates of chronic diseases, as well as poorer diets that undermine the body's immunities to illness. As rural areas tend to be less densely populated, social support can be more difficult to obtain during acute suicidal crises. Predictable social assistance, in the form of cash or in-kind transfers, as well as health insurance and specific workforce guarantees, is the key to mitigating the health and economic impacts of the pandemic. Moreover, social protection enables compliance with confinement measures. For many rural small-scale producers and workers, the generation of income depends on their physical access to markets, and on-farm jobs.