Magical Realism

Narrative mode presenting supernatural or marvellous phenomena matter-of-factly within a detailed, realistic everyday world.

Specifications & Metrics

era: 1925 (critical coinage) – present (Latin American Boom peak 1940s–1970s)
region: Latin America, Europe, and global postcolonial literature
key figures: Gabriel García Márquez, Alejo Carpentier, Jorge Luis Borges, Juan Rulfo, Isabel Allende, Salman Rushdie
exemplar: One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967); The Kingdom of This World (1949)
introduced: 1925

Franz Roh coined magischer Realismus in 1925 for Neue Sachlichkeit painting; translated into Spanish in 1927, it was applied to Hispanic American fiction by Arturo Uslar-Pietri (1948) and Angel Flores (1955).
Distinguished by 'authorial reticence', blending supernatural events into an ordinary real-world setting without explanation rather than building a separate secondary fantasy world.
Achieved global stature through Alejo Carpentier's lo real maravilloso (The Kingdom of This World, 1949), Jorge Luis Borges, Juan Rulfo, Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), and Salman Rushdie.