Leon Sciaky describes his childhood before the First World War in a prosperous, loving Jewish family in the cosmopolitan city of Salonica. Under the Ottoman Empire, the city's diverse communities - Jews, Muslim Turks, Orthodox Greeks and Bulgarians - met, traded and lived alongside each other day-to-day in an atmosphere of tolerance.

At the turn of the twentieth century Salonica (now Thessaloniki in Greece) was an oasis in a swirl of conflicting powers and interests, a vibrant world of varied peoples at the crossroads of East and West. Under Ottoman rule, the city's diverse communities - Jews, Muslims Turks, Orthodox Greeks and Bulgarians - met, traded and lived alongside one another peacefully. But this tolerant society was not to last, eventually succumbing to the nationalist sentiment rampant among the peoples of the Empire. Farewell to Salonica is a fascinating and nostalgic portrait of a lost society, in which Sciaky laments the encroachment of Western 'machine civilisation' on the older, more human ways of the Orient.