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Chimera is a 1972 novel in the form of three loosely connected novellas by John Barth. The novellas...

Chimera is a 1972 novel in the form of three loosely connected novellas by John Barth. The novellas are Dunyazadiad, Perseid and Bellerophoniad, the eponyms of which are Dunyazad, Perseus and Bellerophon, the last of whom slew the Chimera. This work exemplifies postmodernism, with several Q&A; sessions and three diagrams (all in Bellerophoniad). Chimera won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1973. The Dunyazadiad is a retelling of the framing story of Scheherazade, the famed storyteller of the One Thousand and One Nights. The story is told from the point-of-view of Scheherazade's younger sister Dunyazad. Its characterization as metafiction can be understood as a result of the use of several literary devices, most notably the introduction of the author as a character and his interaction with Scheherazade and Dunyazade. The author appears from the future and expresses his admiration for Scheherazade and the 1001 Nights as a work of fiction, of which Barth's Scheherazade has no knowledge. Realizing that he has appeared to Scheherazade on the eve of her first encounter with Shahryar, and seeing her without a solution to her predicament, the author himself suggests the stratagem of