ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the autobiographies of Selma Ekrem, İrfan Orga, Halide Edip Adivar and two non-Turkish writers, Leon Sciaky and Ismail Kemal, the latter an Ottoman-Albanian author. It evaluates what extent these narratives are instructive of the ways in which "Ottoman worlds" were presented to a readership not personally familiar with the general setting, the localities and cultural phenomena. Ekrem and Edip wrote in the 1920s and 1930s, at a time when the events leading to the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the political re-ordering of the Middle East were still fresh in the memory of Western audiences and information on Turkish affairs could be sure of being of keen interest. The notion of the Balkans as an exotic alternative "Other" is often described by Western authors in similar, if not the same terms as the Middle East. This phenomenon has been analysed extensively by Maria Todorova, who speaks of "Balkanism" as a variety of Orientalism.
