The methodological tools that literary studies has developed to account for the relationships between imperialism and literature have not been entirely inclusive of imperial states which do not neatly fit into the empire/colony model of Western European colonialism. As both an empire in its own right and the site of increasing European colonial intervention, the Ottoman Empire during the rise of the Ottoman novel disrupts the neat binary configuration of power which structure many postcolonial theoretical interventions. Therefore, not only are postcolonial literary critical frameworks relatively absent from studies of late Ottoman literature, but Ottoman literature is also missing within postcolonial studies. This paper begins from the following premises: the tools of postcolonial literary theory are crucial for enriching understanding of the ways in which imperial dynamics are given narrative and social-moral power within the Ottoman novel. At the same time, addressing the gaps in postcolonial literary theory’s relevancy for empires beyond Western Europe enhances scholarly understanding of the relationship between imperiality and literary production on a global scale. In attending to these premises, this paper first constructs a methodological framework for postcolonial Ottoman literary criticism through surveying work done on Ottoman colonialism about the late 19th century alongside recent developments in postcolonial literary theory. In the second half of the paper, I then apply these theoretical frameworks to Ahmet Midhat Efendi’s 1875 novel, Felatun Bey and Rakım Efendi. Through a series of close readings, this paper reveals the extent to which the rise of the Ottoman novel participates in the writing of empire and shores up internal moral and social values which organize and reinforce perceptions of late Ottoman imperiality. What becomes clear through these readings is that Ottoman imperialism in this period encompassed both an attempt to internally consolidate the imperial practices of the Ottoman state and negotiate its power relative to other imperial states, particularly those of Britain, France and Russia. These inter-imperial negotiations are highly visible in the narrative structure of the novel.