A prominent novelist, social activist, journalist, and nationalist, Halide Edib Adivar (1882-1964) was one of Turkey's leading feminists in the Young Turk and early Republican period. Edib's account of her private life provides a unique example of a woman's individual and personal struggle for emancipation and gender equality.

A prominent novelist, social activist, journalist, and nationalist, Halide Edib Adivar (1882-1964) was one of Turkey's leading feminists in the Young Turk and early Republican period. Memoirs is the first book in her two volume English-language autobiography, published in 1926, while she and her second husband Dr. Adnan were in exile in London and Paris having fallen out of favor with Mustafa Kemal's one-party regime. Edib describes her childhood, her confrontation with her first husband's polygyny, her divorce, and her entry into political and literary writing. Edib's account of her private life provides a unique example of a woman's individual and personal struggle for emancipation and gender equality.