Abstract
This paper aims to situate Chimera (1989), a debut of contemporary British author Simon Mawer, within the context of his literary creation as well the context of contemporary fiction and scholarly research in the field of literary representation of space and place. Dominated by aspects of spatiality and liminality, the novel embodies the main preoccupation of its author-to situate the plots of his novels into tumultuous historical and geographical settings marked by radical and fundamental transformation.
Chimera hosts a series of elements typical of Mawer's creation-the Mediterranean as the prototypical site of historical, cultural and religious in-betweenness, a war conflict, illicit relationships, and most importantly a prominent spatial motif-in this case it is the archaeological dig of the ancient Etruscan town. The novel provides a unique perspective on place, which it presents from a number of different angles, corresponding with the perspectives of psychogeography and deep topography, as well as ecocriticism and geocriticism.
However, as this paper endeavours to demonstrate, the place in question outgrows the limits of a singular, clearly demarcated entity and becomes a universal expression of spatial experience, eventually stipulating a phenomenological perspective as the principal approach to its analysis.