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What Is Magical Realism? Definition and Examples of Magical Realism in Literature, Plus 7 Magical Realism Novels You Should Read

Written by the MasterClass staff

Last updated: Aug 23, 2021 • 4 min read

Magical realism is one of the most unique literary movements of the last century. While most commonly associated with Latin American authors, writers from all over the world have made big contributions to the genre.

What Is Magical Realism?

Magical realism is a genre of literature that depicts the real world as having an undercurrent of magic or fantasy. Magical realism is a part of the realism genre of fiction.

Within a work of magical realism, the world is still grounded in the real world, but fantastical elements are considered normal in this world. Like fairy tales, magical realism novels and short stories blur the line between fantasy and reality.

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What Is the History of Magical Realism?

The term “magischer realismus,” which translates to “magic realism,” was first used in 1925 by German art critic Franz Roh in his book Nach Expressionismus: Magischer Realismus (After Expressionism: Magical Realism). He used the term to describe the “Neue Sachlichkeit,” or New Objectivity, a style of painting that was popular in Germany at the time that was an alternative to the romanticism of expressionism.

Roh used the term “magischer realismus” to emphasize how magical, fantastic, and strange normal objects can appear in the real world when you stop and look at them.

The genre was growing in popularity in South America when Nach Expressionismus: Magischer Realismus was translated into Spanish in 1927. During a stay in Paris, French-Russian Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier was influenced by m agic realism. He further developed Roh’s concept into what he called “marvelous realism,” a distinction he felt applied to Latin America as a whole.

In 1955, literary critic Angel Flores coined the term “magical realism” (as opposed to “magic realism”) in English in an essay, stating that it combines elements of magic realism and marvelous realism. He named Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges the first magical realist, based on his previously-published collection of short stories Historia Universal de la Infamia (A Universal History of Infamy).

While Latin American authors made magical realism what it is today, authors had previously written stories about mundane situations with fantastical elements before magical realism was a recognized literary genre. For example, Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis—a novel with themes that today’s critics would consider to be magical realism—was published in 1915, a decade before Roh wrote about magic realism and well before the genre emerged in Latin American literature.

What Are the Characteristics of Magical Realism?

Every magical realism novel is different, but there are certain things they all include, such as:

• Realistic setting. All magical realism novels take place in a setting in this world that’s familiar to the reader.

• Magical elements. From talking objects to dead characters to telepathy, every magical realism story has fantastical elements that do not occur in our world. However, they’re presented as normal within the novel.

• Limited information. Magical realism authors deliberately leave the magic in their stories unexplained in order to normalize it as much as possible and reinforce that it is part of everyday life.

• Critique. Authors often use magical realism to offer an implicit critique of society, most notably politics and the elite. The genre grew in popularity in parts of the world like Latin America that were economically oppressed and exploited by Western countries. Magic realist writers used the genre to express their distaste and critique American Imperialism.

• Unique plot structure. Magical realism does not follow a typical narrative arc with a clear beginning, middle, and end like other literary genres. This makes for a more intense reading experience, as the reader does not know when the plot will advance or when the conflict will take place.

7 Magical Realism Novels You Should Read

Read these magical realism stories for inspiration when writing your own novel or short story. They all blur the line between fantasy and reality and include magical elements that don’t exist in the real world:

1. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (1967). A multi-generational story about a patriarch who dreams about a city of mirrors called Macondo then creates it according to his own perceptions.

2. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (1981). A novel about a boy with telepathic powers because he was born at midnight the same day India became an independent country.

3. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende (1982). A multi-generational story about a woman with paranormal powers and a connection to the spirit world.

4. Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987). A novel about a former slave haunted by an abusive ghost.

5. Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel (1989). A novel about a woman whose emotions are infused in her cooking, causing unintentional effects to the people she feeds.

6. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami (1994). A novel about a man searching for his missing cat, and eventually his missing wife, in a world underneath the streets of Tokyo.

7. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman (2013). A novel about a man who reflects on his past after returning to his hometown for a funeral.

Whether you’re delving into magical realism as an artistic exercise or trying to get the attention of publishing houses, it’s tough to know where to begin. Award-winning author of The Sandman series Neil Gaiman has spent decades dreaming up magical worlds. In his MasterClass on the art of storytelling, Neil shares all he’s learned on how to create convincing characters and vivid fictional worlds.

Magical realism is a literary style that weaves threads of fantasy into a depiction of everyday life. Its heroes aren’t fairies or sorcerers, they’re ordinary people — whose lives happen to butt up against the extraordinary.

It sounds simple enough: you take the mundane and make it just a little bit magical. It’s an enchanting formula first popularized by Latinx authors in the 20th century, and has since spread all over, from England to Japan. But despite magical realism’s reach, the term is surprisingly hard to nail down. You’ll hear scholars claim it’s not a genre but a sensibility, a way of looking at reality.

Confused? Don’t worry. This post will help you understand exactly what is magical realism — and introduce you to 15 of its most spellbinding reads.

First, let’s put the “real” in magical realism. Unlike fantasy, books written in this vein always take place in our world. You won’t find an alternate reality where schools for wizards are accessible by secret trains, and you can’t start out in the real world only to be whisked away to a land of enchantment. If it’s set in the past — not uncommon — you won’t encounter anything like a cabal of vampires pulling the strings behind the curtain of history.

This style has something in common with urban fantasy, which also tends to infuse familiar settings with a bit of strangeness. But there are two key differences. First, the cast: urban fantasy authors love their magical creatures, populating their cities with vampires, werewolves, and faeries. But magical realism is more likely to star run-of-the-mill students, mailmen, and secretaries.

Second, urban fantasy tends to systematically lay out how the magic works — letting you peek under the hood of, say, human-elf relations or the mechanics of spell-casting. But with magical realism, everything out of the ordinary just is.

In sum, authors working in this mode painstakingly draw up settings rich in the textures of ordinary life. Read one of their books, and you’ll find a mirror held up to the world you know — the workaday realm of butter knives and ticket stubs. This commitment to the real world makes magical realism a powerful tool for sociopolitical critique. Indeed, many of its most renowned works grapple with serious social ills, from colonialism to fascism to slavery. 

Magical realists set their work in a world that’s recognizably ours, but there’s always something uncanny afoot. Maybe you’ll meet a telepath, or see something inexplicable happen — a baby born with feathered wings, an egg hatching a ruby, or rain falling in a star-shaped pattern on the ground. Time, in particular, tends to be fluid and nonlinear: the narration skips ahead, premonitions abound, and the dead have a tendency to stick around. 

The key thing is, this magic is never explained. The characters seem to take it for granted: they react to it emotionally instead of questioning how it works. And although it’s never subjected to the cold light of logic, it makes a kind of dream-like, internal sense. 

In the end, magical realists are awake to the strangeness of so-called “ordinary life.” It draws up a subjective picture of reality, and while its supernatural flourishes don’t match up with how the world looks, they capture how it can feel.

Magical realism makes heavy use of details to ground readers in its slightly off-kilter settings. The prose tends to be finely wrought and lyrical, carrying the flavor of poetry. With this highbrow style, it reads like the lovechild of fantasy and lit fic. But supernatural elements notwithstanding, it is — in movie terms — not genre but prestige: more Oscar-bait arthouse flick than fantasy blockbuster shimmering with SFX. 

Have you ever heard of the “sci-fi ghetto”? This tongue-in-cheek term refers to the dismissal of science fiction as something pulpy and unworthy of serious attention — not art, but a guilty pleasure. Fair or not, this reputation applies to fantasy novels as well. 

Unlike fantasy, magical realism gets to mingle with lit fic. It shares shelf space with highbrow books, the kind debated in grad school seminars, and it’s featured in its share of scholarship too. Because of this reputation for artistic seriousness, authors writing magical realism have no problem netting nominations for major literary honors, from the Man Booker to the Nobel.

With authors scattered all over the globe, magical realism is one of literature’s most diverse styles — and it’s been going strong since the mid-20th century. Maybe you’re a longtime fan looking to expand beyond the classics, or maybe you’re totally new to its charms. Either way, our list will help you find a positively enchanting read.

If you're on the fence as to which amazing fantasy book to pick up next, you can also step into our 30-second quiz below to get a personalized fantasy book recommendation