The base of the novel Self help is an artistically transformed event of the life of its author – contemporary British writer Edward Docx, – which allowed him to compare two worlds – England and Russia – and reveal their interrelationship and interdependence. English world seems to be more comfortable, but the people living there – by some reasons – are lonely and unhappy. The fates of all the British characters in the novel testify to this. The Russian world is cold and cruel, it is like hell. It is very difficult for a person, especially a person with talent, to live in it and stay afloat. E. Docx clearly admits: everyone, either in Britain or in Russia, has their own hell, but the world, in spite of all its differences, is a unified whole. And only you yourself, your family and your friends can help you out. The writer created an original, expressive “Petersburg text” in his novel, which is rarely to find in the English literature.
contemporary British novel; traditions of Dickens and Dostoevsky; Russians and British; imagology.