Magic Realism

Magic Realism is about authors using utter disillusionment to portray such an intense feeling that cannot be described in the realm of pure reality. The article starts with an excerpt from the novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting which exemplifies the idea of magic realism and is a great opener for the discussion of such a literary use. The excerpt is about the communist party in the Czech Republic and uses magic realism to help describe the author's total abandonment from the party and complete loneliness they felt in response to such an act. The author of the article gives a brief cultural overview of where magic realism began and in which cultures and languages it is more commonly found. Famous authors that frequent the use of magic realism are Salman Rushdie, Milan Kundera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Guenter Grass. The author also cites several examples from modern fiction that bring up different experiences all through the same technique of writing. The reader is then given more of a personal background that brings us back to the excerpt from the beginning of the article. We understand more clearly what the excerpt is about after a more political and personal background is given. The author eloquently helps the reader understand what the excerpt from The Book of Laughter and Forgetting means and how it makes us feel. "...it so powerdully and poignantly expresses the emotion that has been built up over the preceding pages." The article ends with the author analysing the writing style and how the author's cinematic background may have influenced his writing style.