The subject of this text are metafictional elements in the novels Nišan (2007) by Blaže Minevski and Knjiga o Tari (2004) by Zdenko Lešić. Starting from the theoretical models of metafiction (Linda Hutcheon, Patricia Waugh, Mark Currie), our comparative interpretation of the novels will be conducted on three levels: 1. Review of metafictional topics and techniques in the novels: explicit thematizing and demonstrating of the following relations: literature – reality, art – life, fact – fiction; the techniques of “overt diegetic narcissism” (self-conscious narrator, autothematization of writing). 2. Metatextual levels in the novels: variants of auto – referential rethinking of the author’s own narrative identity and metatextual variants of commentary relations to the texts by other authors, to the literary tradition and to the literary codes and conventions. 3. Ontological implications of metafiction in the novels: the function of metafiction in indicating the destabilized ontological status of literature; the function of metafiction regarding the creation of ontological implosion: self-conscious problematizations and levelling of boundaries between worlds (literature – reality, fact – fiction) and between texts (literary – nonliterary texts, original – plagiarism).

postmodern novel; metafiction; ontological dominant