If you find yourself wishing the world was just a bit more magical, it’s time to delve into the enchanting realm of magical realism. Originating in Latin America, the genre blends the realism of everyday life with glimmers of enchantment and fantastical elements, often also incorporating political and social commentary. These novels are steeped in magic but grounded in weighty issues and the human condition. Ready to embark on a journey like no other? Here are nine magical realist tales to get you started.
Often considered one of the founders of the genre, Gabriel García Márquez has written many enchanting classics, including this masterwork that chronicles the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. It is filled with unforgettable characters and lyrical enchantment.
“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”
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At the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, at the exact moment of India’s independence, 1,000 children throughout India are born, endowed with magical gifts and telepathically linked to one another. Saleem Sinai is one of them; and as he grows up, he finds that his every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs.
This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its people–a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Twenty-five years after its publication, Midnight’ s Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time.
This classic novel follows Janie Crawford as she sets out to be her own person—no mean feat for a black woman in the 1930s. Janie's quest for identity takes her through three marriages and into a journey back to her roots.
Weylyn Grey isn’t like other people. From being able to conjure freak storms and trees that appear to grow overnight, his unique abilities are a curiosity at best and at worst, a danger to himself and the people around him, especially the woman he loves.
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When the lifeless body of a young girl washes up on the shores of a small community, a puzzling mystery begins to unravel as the young girl miraculously comes back to life. Three families are ready to take the stranger in—one convinced she’s their kipnapped daughter, another sees the spitting image of his younger sister, and the third are certain she’s their son’s secret lovechild. But the child herself is mute and unable to answer a few basic questsions: Who is she? And where did she come from?
Leigh Chen Sanders is absolutely certain about one thing: when her mother committed suicide, she turned into a bird. So Leigh travels to Taiwan to meet her maternal grandparents for the first time, hoping to find her mother, the bird, there as well. In her search, she winds up chasing ghosts, uncovering family secrets, and forging a new relationship with her grandparents.
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In a Tokyo suburb, a young man searches for his wife’s missing cat—and then for his wife—in a world beneath the city’s surface. Gripping, prophetic, and suffused with comedy and menace, this imaginative detective story is an account of a disintegrating marriage and an excavation of the secrets from Japan’s forgotten campaign in Manchuria during World War II.
In one of Murakami's best, a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a psychic prostitute, a politician, a teenage girl, and an aging war veteran.