The novel, as a genre, was a 19th century phenomenon for the Ottoman Empire. Different millets in the Empire discovered and imported it as a brand new medium to understand, interpret, and describe their modernizing societies and the transformation they involved. Istanbul was the most important hub in the development of novel writing and not only the first Turkish novel, but also first Armenian, Greek, and Bulgarian ones have been written in Istanbul. Armenian literature had an interesting and special position in this fascinating literary atmosphere of the city and Istanbul continued to be the main center of modern Armenian literature until the collapse of the Empire. Interestingly, since its very beginning, Armenian novels had been produced in two languages: Armenian and Turkish. In 1851, Vartan Pasha published The Story of Agapi, the first novel in Turkish but in Armenian alphabet; in the same year, Hovhannes Hisarian wrote Khosrov and Makruhi in Armenian. After this date, as a popular genre, the novel flourished, the number of production dramatically increased until 1915. In the last quarter of the period, Zabel Yessayan took the scene as one of the first Armenian woman fiction writers. In this paper first, I aim to understand the main dynamics that informed the Ottoman Armenian novel writing in Istanbul since the very beginning and attempt to contextualize its birth taking into account the discussions went along with it. Second, I will focus on Zabel Yessayan’s works and try to discuss how her fiction changed and challenged the general dynamics of Ottoman Armenian novel.