Abstract: The subject of the research is the death in prose by the famous modern Canadian writer Margaret Atwood (b. 1939). The object of the research are the novels and short stories of the author (novels "The Blind Assassin", "Cat's Eye", "Lady Oracle" etc.). The author of the article pays special attention to the biographical narratives of the Canadian writer, in which the main character is also the narrator. Stories of storytellers by M. Atwood, as a rule, always unfolds retrospectively – from the present to the past. During their journey, the narrating characters mentally return to the past and conduct "negotiations with the dead." Based on the researches of M. Atwood's legacy, as well as on the literary works of the Canadian writer herself, the author of the article describes the place of the theme of death in her retrospective narratives. The author of the article comes to the following conclusions. 1) The theme of death is one of the key themes in her work. Atwood, since the retrospective narrative of the biography itself involves an appeal to the past, to the world of the dead. Remembering, the main character, the narrator, mentally makes a journey into the world of the past, which M. Atwood rhymes with the afterlife. 2) The creative process, the creation of a story in the writer's artistic world, takes place during "negotiations with the dead", when the hero-narrator mentally addresses people from his past. 3) Death in the works of M. Atwood often appears in the form of a relic, an archaeological find, a lost and rediscovered thing. The difficult process of exhumation and extraction from the ground is consonant with the equally difficult process of dissecting the narrator's own complexes and resentments.

Abstract: The subject of the research in this article is Margaret Atwood's literary game, which includes work with myths, world history and literature. Margaret Atwood (b. 1939) is a well-known modern Canadian writer, poet, literary critic and critic. Her works include the novel The Handmaid's Tale (1985) and its sequel, The Testaments (2019), as well as the fantasy trilogy The Mindless Addam (2003-2013). No matter what M. Atwood writes about, her works are always a story, a complex and multilevel narrative, in the center of which stands the figure of the narrator. Having begun her literary activity in the heyday of postmodernism, M. Atwood combines many features of this trend in her work: literary play, rethinking archetypal images and traditions, deconstruction. Taking as a basis the achievements of foreign and domestic researchers of M. Atwood's work, as well as research in the field of literary studies by M. Atwood herself, we describe how M. Atwood studies, analyzes and recreates well–known patterns on a new basis – in Canadian literature. The main conclusions of the study are: 1) Being a representative of young Canadian literature without a well-formed cultural and literary layer, M. Atwood borrows from the global literary tradition, as well as mythology and folklore, heroes and images that she seeks to "instill" on new Canadian soil. 2) M. Atwood's deconstruction is not the destruction, analysis of an established tradition, but, on the contrary, an attempt to create it through appropriation and assimilation of other people's traditions. 3) M. Atwood, as a rule, takes ancient Greek and European myths and fairy tales as a basis. 4) Working with the characters of wandering plots and textbook works (Shakespeare), M. Atwood often resorts to overturning the established idea of characters, creating doppelgangers and "werewolves".