Chapter 7 - Magical Realism

Summary

In contemporary parlance, magical realism is most often considered to be a phenomenon of Latin American origin that as of the 1960s spread to the rest of the world, and primarily to postcolonial or emerging literatures. It should be remembered, though, that between the two World Wars in Europe there arose something we might call magic realism, to distinguish it from later magical realism. The roots of this European movement are to found in German and Italian literature, with a later development in Flemish literature. Names to mention are Ernst Jünger, Massimo Bontempelli and Hubert Lampo. Later authors to have been linked to the mode, though now usually retrospectively with reference to the magical variant, are Günther Grass, Milan Kundera, Angela Carter, José Saramago and Carlos Ruiz Zafón.