J.M. Coetzee e la confessione. "A Hateful Siege of Contraries"

In analyzing Coetzee’s seminal essay on confession, “Confession and Double Thoughts”, which has surpringly been neglected by post colonial studies – a recent translation appeared only a few months ago – I try to show what happens when Coetzee turns from writing an essay on confession, centering mainly on Dostoevsky, to authoring a novel whose main character is Dostoevsky himself. As an example, I analyze The Master of Petersburg as a re-writing of Dostoevsky’s The Possessed, whose villain-hero, Stavrogin, slowly takes hold of Coetzee’s fictional main character, the historically real author, Dostoevsky.