Dostoevsky’s confessionality and contemporary English metanovel about a writer

Dostoevsky’s heritage found its reinterpretations in English metanarratives. Focusing on John Irving’s, Philip Roth’s and John M. Coetzee’s novels, the article discusses different forms of encoding Dostoevsky in text - a biography of a fictional writer (distant form), a fictional confession (egocentric form) and a fictional biography of the classic himself (“psychohistorical” form). However during the analysis the author concludes that novels “The World According to Garp” (1976), “Operation Shylock: A Confession” (1993) and “The Master of Petersburg” (1994) that discussed in the article bring understanding with reference to Dostoevsky global contemporary violence problems: the aggressive feminism (Irving), anti-semitism (Roth), terrorism (Coetzee). Important theme of the writer’s responsible for his word becomes thus an additional humanistic, philosophical and aesthetic context.