Dispossessed Homes: Remembering Cyprus in the Aftermath of Conflict

Abstract

This paper will interrogate the reconfiguration of "home" in the context of the Cyprus conflict, as depicted in Christy Lefteri's novel A Watermelon, a Fish, and a Bible. The long history of ethnic and political tensions between the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities escalated with political instability and reached its peak in 1974. Set during the heated midst of the 1974 conflict, Lefteri's novel offers multiple meanings of home through shifting focalisation. This study combines focalisation from narratology with Henri Lefebvre's the Production of Space, enriched by theories surrounding the notion of home. This analytical framework enables a comprehensive exploration of how narrative perspectives both shape and reflect the phenomenology of space in literature, particularly within conflict zones. This approach is particularly relevant for analysing divided or contested geographies, such as Cyprus in Christy Lefteri's A Watermelon, a Fish, and a Bible. By examining how characters perceive and navigate their surroundings, the analysis will reveal how "home", once seen as secure, familiar, or sacred, is redefined by conflict and how new meanings emerge in moments of crisis. It also highlights the dialogic nature of spatial experience in literature, where multiple perspectives on space can coexist, clash, and influence each other, reflecting the complexity of lived experience in a divided realm.