This article offers a comparative-typological analysis of social-artistic conflict in the short prose of the English writer William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) and the Uzbek writer Said Ahmad (1920-2007). Although the two authors belong to divergent literary traditions English critical realism and Uzbek psychological prose and cons are separated by imperial contexts, language and worldview, their short stories reveal significant typological correspondences in the construction of conflict. The study examines three interrelated dimensions: autobiographism as the experiential foundation of conflict; interpersonal clash as a vehicle for exposing moral essence; and the escape phenomenon as a model of character transformation under social pressure. Drawing on the methodology of comparative literary studies and on the theories of Bakhtin, Lukács, Bourdieu and Foucault, the article demonstrates that in both writers’ conflict operates not merely as a plot mechanism but as an ontological instrument that discloses the relationship between the individual and society. The findings establish that a shared human problematic is realised through distinct national-aesthetic strategies: Maugham’s intellectual-ironic realism and Said Ahmad’s lyrical-tragic psychologism, which illuminate the same human question in different yet mutually enriching ways.