Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book analyses "post-Ottoman" autobiographies, autobiographical narratives describing the part of their authors' lives that was spent while the Ottoman Empire still existed. It examines texts produced in two contexts, authors writing either in the Turkish Republic for a Turkish readership or authors writing in English for an American or British audience. As an era, the end of the Ottoman Empire was a turbulent crucible out of which a number of new nation states with distinct and often painfully constructed identities arose, the new Turkish state being no exception. Post-Ottoman autobiographies can speak to a variety of different audiences in each of the Ottoman successor states. The loss of Salonica and the surrounding province for the Ottoman Empire led to yet another in a series of migration movements, with parts of the region's Muslim population deciding to move east towards still Ottoman-held lands.