The classic novel by the pillar of American postmodernism, the author who, along with K. Vonnegut, J. Heller and T. Pynchon, stood at the origins of the tradition of “black humor.” It was for “The Chimera” that Barth received the most prestigious literary award in the United States, the National Book Award. This triptych of variations on the themes of classical mythology - the story of Dunyazade, the sister of Shahrazad from the Arabian Nights, and the Greek myths of Perseus and Bellerophon, turned in an ironic and playful manner - unfolds, as the translator puts it, “a fireworks display of puns, rebuses, riddles, alliterations and allusions, sweet or risky jokes...” After all, in Barthes’ cosmos, a la the Russian nesting doll, everything is connected to everything, or rather, everything is invested in everything.