The Early Years: Magical Realism in South America

Magical Realism, an internationally beloved genre, recently hit popular American bookstores through names like Neil Gaiman and Haruki Murakami. This concept, however, began in South America’s oral narrative tradition long ago. The genre first notably entered the modern era through the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

One Hundred Years of Solitude, published in 1967, follows Columbia’s formation and history with bitingly vicious commentary. A family raises a nation-state from a little city of mirrors by a riverside prophetic dream. The century of their self-made tragedies and failures reigns in the scale of Greek epics. Topical subjects such as colonialism, Liberal reform, reform of the reform, war, corporate hegemony, and the modern world rain down upon them. This family, known as the Buendias, the Good Day, create their own destruction and are stagnated by their generationally transcendent sins against themselves and their country. Bitter ironies, inherent human loneliness, and pitiable figures paint an incisive view of controversial political opinions in an era characterized in the public consciousness by the phrase “Death Squad”. The novel achieved international acclaim. Marquez survived to remain vocally critical of Columbian politics until his surprisingly natural death in 2014, beloved by his country.

Other notable figures of literary political criticism in South American literature would follow in the steps of Marquez and his contemporaries, their success slingshotting Magical Realism into Europe. From there, it would spread circuitously to the North Americas, the genre’s heartland remaining trapped below the southern border. Chicano literary tradition remaining in academic exile until its era of accepted social relevance amusingly coincided with the British influence of Magical Realism in Indochina.

Marquez also notably wrote the novel A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, a study in social alienation and sudden wonder cut short by inherent cruelty. This book is of a manageable and considerably shorter in length than Marquez’s most famous tome, One Hundred Years, and more than adequately explores the author’s continuous themes of solitude within society and exile.

For younger readers, there is an unofficial children’s book adaption of A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings that expresses acceptance and hope. Written by the British author David Almond in 1998, Skellig went on to win multiple awards and the love of a nation’s youth. This haunting yet whimsical tale has no age limit. Rent a copy for your child, your friends, and yourself.

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Link List:

Gabriel Garcia Marquez:

A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings

One Hundred Years of Solitude 

David Almond:

Skellig
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Resources:

Nothing but years of experience, love, and obsession. 
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