magic realism
Fantastical everyday fiction
Magic realism is a literary and artistic style that weaves supernatural or fantastical elements into otherwise realistic settings, treating the magical as ordinary.
The genre flourished in Latin American literature—Gabriel García Márquez's *One Hundred Years of Solitude* is the landmark example.
Unlike fantasy, magic realism doesn't explain or justify its impossibilities; ghosts sit at dinner tables, time loops back on itself, and characters accept these occurrences without surprise.
The term also applies to visual art with similar qualities.
Hazy and fantastical
- uncannyEerily beyond normal
- etherealDelicate beyond earthly measure
- phantasmagoricBizarrely dreamlike and shifting
- hauntingDisturbingly unforgettable
eerie · mysterious · otherworldly · liminal · spectral · enchanted · mystical · numinous
Foretelling of future events
- levitationUnsupported aerial suspension
- miraculous eventsSupernatural happenings attributed divinely
- telekinesisMental object manipulation
- ancestral spiritsSouls of deceased kin
flying carpets · fortune telling · spontaneous combustion · spirits · omens
- One Hundred Years of SolitudeMultigenerational Latin American epic
- Salman RushdieControversial novelist, knighted
- Toni Morrison"Song of Solomon"
- Latin American literatureBooks from Spanish-speaking Americas
Isabel Allende · Haruki Murakami · The Tin Drum · Jorge Luis Borges · literary fiction
Storyteller whose credibility wavers
- nonlinear timeEvents without sequential order
- generational sagaNarrative across family eras
- defamiliarizationMaking common things seem strange
- symbolic imageryPictures representing abstract concepts
dreamlike
Hazy and fantastical
- uncannyEerily beyond normal
- etherealDelicate beyond earthly measure
- phantasmagoricBizarrely dreamlike and shifting
haunting · eerie · mysterious · otherworldly · liminal · spectral · enchanted · mystical · numinous · wondrous
prophecy
Foretelling of future events
- levitationUnsupported aerial suspension
- miraculous eventsSupernatural happenings attributed divinely
- telekinesisMental object manipulation
ancestral spirits · flying carpets · fortune telling · spontaneous combustion · spirits · omens
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- One Hundred Years of SolitudeMultigenerational Latin American epic
- Salman RushdieControversial novelist, knighted
- Toni Morrison"Song of Solomon"
Isabel Allende · Haruki Murakami · The Tin Drum · Jorge Luis Borges · Latin American literature · literary fiction
unreliable narrator
Storyteller whose credibility wavers
- nonlinear timeEvents without sequential order
- generational sagaNarrative across family eras
- defamiliarizationMaking common things seem strange
symbolic imagery · ancestral memory · liminal space · collective memory
- fantasywizard, witch, dragon, elf, dwarf
- literaturebooks, book, fiction, poetry, stories
- British LiteratureShakespeare, Dickens, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Austen
- speculative fictionsci-fi, science fiction, dystopia, fantasy, futurism
- fiction writingfiction, novels, plot, chapters, character
- literary genresfiction, poetry collections, family drama, classic novels, epic poetry
magic realismnaturalism
Worldview excluding the supernatural
social realism · kitchen sink realism · literary realism · photorealism · gritty realism
magic realismrationalism
Reason as knowledge source
positivism · empiricism · demythologization · disenchantment · materialism
magic, magical, magician, realistic, realism, magically, realist, magicians, mage