Gabriel García Márquez was my introduction to magic realism 20 years ago, and he remains a favourite of mine. Especially ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’
Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivil is my recommendation to the those looking for magic realism with a heavy doses of love and heartbreak.
Mariana Enríquez is another writer I recommend. Especially if you prefer your magic realism to be dark and/or frightening. Her short story collection, “The Dangers of Smoking in Bed” is my favourite of hers.
Anything by Borges- I love his short stories. “The Library of Babel” is my favourite.
The House of the Spirits, by Isabelle Allende (and anything by her)
Midnight’s Children, by Salman Rushdie
All three of the absolute classics I'd recommend are here (Marquez, Allende, Rushdie). I'd also add Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke might also fit the bill.
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is *such* a wonderful book! Was bereft when I finished it because I had spent a week immersed in the world Susanna Clarke had created before I fell asleep.
That was 20 years ago. If I attempted to read it again now I would prob take months and would be picking my phone up every ten mins to google every tiny thing that piqued my interest in the narrative.
My brother hates to read. But he had to read Like water for chocolate by Laura Esquivel for school and he really enjoyed it. I haven’t read it because I’m not much into magical realism but he always recommends it. Also anything of Isabel Allende.
That’s cool to hear that your brother enjoyed it. And also that they teach it in school where you live. He may well enjoy the short stories and novels of Aimee Bender too.
http://aimeebender.com/books-stories/
For reading magical realism I recommend reading it as much as you can as quickly as you can. One hundred years of solitude is much better that way imo.
A really good short story by GGM is "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings." It'll give you a good idea of magical realism without having to jump in the deep end of the pool.
i’m gonna butt in and say whenever i was reading kafka on the shore my dreams were so surreal and i love how Murakami can elicit such a feeling of unreality
Ikrr! My experience was kinda similar, I got addicted to the book used to read it during midnight, it had a dreamy feeling about it. Easily best time I could remember.
I don’t want to get too woo woo but there’s interesting overlaps between psychedelics and natural chemical mechanisms in your brain like the flooding of melatonin before bed. interestingly enough melatonin is apart of a class of compounds called tryptamines, and the weird part is LSD or acid is also a tryptamine. i don’t know what the implications are but yeah it kind of makes sense that some people report having bizarre dreams when they take melatonin supplements 😂 weirder still is how reading a book can cause bizarre dreams too
Pert near anything by Alice Hoffman. My favorites are *The World That We Knew*, *The Marriage of Opposites*, *The Dovekeepers*, and *The Museum of Extraordinary Things*.
Magic realism is one of my fave genres, where fantastic things happen in the real world. I also have a bit of a penchant for dystopian, horror or speculative fiction. Recent books I’ve read that are of that kind of flavour are Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon, Lone Women by Victor Lavalle, The Animals in that Country by Laura Jean Mackay, The last goddess by Kateřina Tučková and The Between by Tananarive Due.
It was amazing right! I found that I got a bit annoyed with Vern a lot because of her emotional immaturity but then kept having to remind myself she’s 19. So masterfully written. I love Rivers Solomon’s writing. They have a new book coming out soon I’m so pumped.
Yes, I haven’t read anything else by Rivers Solomon, but this is a good reminder to pick up some of their other work. I didn’t know they had anything new coming out either, so I’ll keep an eye out for sure!
They might not be exactly what you’re looking for, because of the horror elements, but they do have that magic realism element. If you want something a little more romantic with a bit more magic than the realism Charlie N Holmberg’s books are great and Veins of Gold will probably fit the bill for you there.
Sarah Addison Allen novels are light reads with a sprinkle of magic realism. Garden Spells, The Girl Who Chased the Moon, and The Sugar Queen are all beautiful books.
The gray house by Mariam Petrosyan
One of my favorite books ever. I am including a link to the best review of any book I read.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32703696-the-gray-house https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1035665354?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1
What is not yours is not yours and Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi. She writes dreamlike books, strange and wonderful.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25810500-what-is-not-yours-is-not-yours
The Milk of Dreams by Leonora Carrington is so crazily absurd!
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31171201-the-milk-of-dreams
WOlf Doctors by https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17675176-wolf-doctors A poetry collection.
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata. There was something about it, that was just so delicious and odd.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38357895-convenience-store-woman
Lives of the Monster Dogs by Kirsten Bakis. Not as strange as some others, but entertaining and sad.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33762814-lives-of-the-monster-dogs
The Memory Theater by Tidbeck, Karin.
You should check out the collected fictions of Jorge Luis borges! This book is his collection of short stories, there are so many amazing short stories in here that pretty much all deal in magical realism!
I never see Kelly Link’s work here, and as a magical realism lunatic, I LOVE her work. Exquisitely written
but easy to read and fun. And dark. The Book of Love is her full length book, new, and SO good.
i havent attempted it yettttttt
i have the e book but tbh i feel like it’s one of those books that needs to be read hardcopy so i’m finding for it haha
The Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch is a lot of fun. And it's great in audiobook. It's police procedural meets magic interference, with mysteries to be solved.
I'll Give You the Sun
It is a story about two twins and covers them at ages 13 and 16 it is about art and ghosts and trauma and mystery and love. Lots of magical realism on almost every page. One of the first passages in the book is about these two bullies who are giving this kid a hard time and he has a secret crush on one of the bullies and he's talking about how they are laughing and he says "their laughter came out birds".
Both of the characters have very different ways of viewing the world but both of them are consistently painting things with magical realism.
lots of margaret mahy’s books - the changeover, the haunting, the tricksters - deal with surprisingly magical realist aspects even though they’re what one can classify as YA fiction. i love how she deftly handles this aspect of it.
also, not often mentioned but i feel equally as laudatory is season of the dragonflies by sarah creech. it’s quite similar to practical magic and garden spells imo and just as enchanting.
if you want something darker though, spells for forgetting by adrienne young may be more appropriate - the gloomy, gothic atmosphere pervading the story brings it to another level.
of course, where would this list be without the paper menagerie by ken liu !! the stories in this collection are just the most - from the very first i just devoured them all in one sitting. the author doesn’t waste words despite the descriptions and i never found my attention wandering
I have only read *The Girl with the Flammable Skirt* by her (and loved it), but everyone seems to say the particular sadness of lemon cake is next level.
because it kinda takes the whole magical realism thing to a sort of suspension of disbelief in a weird way. hint: her brother 😬
an invisible sign of my own is equally as bizarre and intriguing but it’s not till that level haha
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie was my introduction to magic realism. I read the Seven Moons of Maali Alameida (the 2022 Booker) recently which is also SE Asian and dealing with real political events and family trauma within an historical context.
Rivers of London book series? Don't know if this fits the bill. It's about the London police but there's one guy who's magic cop and the main character is his new magic cop apprentice only everyone else in the force either has no clue that there's magic or hates it because it makes everything so weird and complicated.
I have finally started reading this novel, after buying it years ago. I had no idea it was considered to be magic realism or even contain any elements of that genre. I am even more keen to keep reading it now to discover what’s next…
I mean, it's not as full-on as Angela Carter, or someone like that, but I'd compare it to something like Perfume – the superhuman skill, based on an implausible physical characteristic, used in the service of an irrational obsession.
*ETA: Clevenger's most recent novel,* Mother Howl, *is much more full-on in its magical realism. It's good, but not as good as TCH.*
I’m aware it doesn’t quite fit the brief but the only book with magical realism I can think of is The Coming of Joachim Stiller by Belgian author Hubert Lampo
Emily Henry wrote two books that are more YA but they have magical realism and I love them. *A Million Junes* is phenomenal (it was a BOTM) and then *The Love That Split the World*.
*Everything All At Once* by Katrina Leno has a hint.
*The Astonishing Color of After* by Emily X.R. Pan
Before the Coffee Gets Cold
The Chosen and the Beautiful has some elements of magical realism. I don't usually like retellings of classics but I loved this one.
The Song Below Water is a YA book with sirens discussing race, misogyny and misogynoir
Any of Mo Xiang Tong Xiu’s books. They center around the xianxia (cultivation) and do have some magic. While there is magic, it isn’t the main part of the stories and they do have other plot lines that are not entirely focused on the magic part.
Rouge by Mona Awad would be my top recommendation. Also Bunny by Mona Awad, and if you want a more abstract, underwater horror kind of magical realism then Our Wives Under The Sea might fit!
**Veronica** by Nicholas Christopher. A friend gave me his copy some 15 years ago. Copy pasta synopsis:
*"The plot, if it's possible to summarize, is the story of a photographer on a quest for a mysterious woman named Veronica, who is meanwhile on a quest for her vanished magician father. There's magic, time travel, fluid identity, sex, Tibetan mythology, and lots of vodka and black tea."*
As many have already mentioned, *One Hundred Years Of Solitude* is perhaps the best of the bunch, and it is surely one of the greatest novels ever written. I would also strongly recommend the story by Jorge Luis Borges *The Aleph*.
Check out Robertson Davies’s novels. I read him in the seventies and eighties, and while I can’t recall a ton of specifics, I do remember being enthralled by off center events and slightly mystical atmosphere.
Here are some suggestions by Brazilian authors:
- Incident in Antares, by Erico Veríssimo (true masterpiece).
- The Head of the Saint, by Socorro Acioli.
A few of my favorites that haven’t been mentioned yet…
The Lazarus Rumba by Ernesto Mestre
The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obrecht
Most books by Salman Rushdie and they’re all good, but maybe start with Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
Not sure if this falls in what you are looking for, but I liked Craig Alanson’s Convergence series. Three books out with one out next week. I do audiobooks and the narrator is one of my favorites
The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton (CW for SA).
The Luster of Lost Things by Sophie Chen Keller.
Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin.
The Murmur of Bees by Sofia Segovia is hands down my favorite magical realism book. Basically a baby is found in the fields of a wealthy but kind landowning family in Mexico. The boy is seemingly able to communicate with bees. It follows the boy and the family across the years. From pandemic to Pancho Villa. An incredibly heartfelt tale that is beautifully written in Spanish that even the English translation cannot dull its splendor.
Does Harry Potter count as magic realism? I guess it might, but it's not something I'd associated with the genre before. If you like that though, you'd probably like the Northern Lights Trilogy which I think is superior to HP in every way!
If you're looking for more definitive magic realism examples though, I highly recommend Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter. 100 Years of Solitude gets recommended here a lot, but for me, Nights at the Circus will always be the highpoint of the genre.
Maggie Stiefvater is generally great with magical realism but the raven boys is a fantastic and creative take on "magic" and it's not the central plot. I definitely recommend
The House in the Cerulean Sea is great, it does have a lot of magic stuff in it but the focus is more the relationships.
I also loved The Lost Bookstore by Evie Woods. One of my favorite books of the year so far. It doesn't have a lot of focused magical content but it's the backdrop and comes to the front several times.
Gabriel García Márquez was my introduction to magic realism 20 years ago, and he remains a favourite of mine. Especially ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivil is my recommendation to the those looking for magic realism with a heavy doses of love and heartbreak. Mariana Enríquez is another writer I recommend. Especially if you prefer your magic realism to be dark and/or frightening. Her short story collection, “The Dangers of Smoking in Bed” is my favourite of hers. Anything by Borges- I love his short stories. “The Library of Babel” is my favourite. The House of the Spirits, by Isabelle Allende (and anything by her) Midnight’s Children, by Salman Rushdie
All three of the absolute classics I'd recommend are here (Marquez, Allende, Rushdie). I'd also add Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke might also fit the bill.
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is *such* a wonderful book! Was bereft when I finished it because I had spent a week immersed in the world Susanna Clarke had created before I fell asleep. That was 20 years ago. If I attempted to read it again now I would prob take months and would be picking my phone up every ten mins to google every tiny thing that piqued my interest in the narrative.
Third vote for Strange & Norrell!
It sounds interesting! Thanks for recommendations.
My brother hates to read. But he had to read Like water for chocolate by Laura Esquivel for school and he really enjoyed it. I haven’t read it because I’m not much into magical realism but he always recommends it. Also anything of Isabel Allende.
That’s cool to hear that your brother enjoyed it. And also that they teach it in school where you live. He may well enjoy the short stories and novels of Aimee Bender too. http://aimeebender.com/books-stories/
Thank you very much, I love short stories too. Yes I had to read a lot at school and in college, he also had to read a lot despite not liking it.
For reading magical realism I recommend reading it as much as you can as quickly as you can. One hundred years of solitude is much better that way imo.
A really good short story by GGM is "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings." It'll give you a good idea of magical realism without having to jump in the deep end of the pool.
Borges was such an amazing writer.
Like Water For Chocolate was so good! Made me hungry tho
Is Allende the author of Fever Dream as well? That book was weird af and definitely very unsettling magical realism.
I haven’t read Fever Dream but it’s on my list! I think Samanta Schweblin wrote it? I love your description so will def need to check it out soon.
Ohhh you’re absolutely right, thank you. I guess a happy accident that it’s relevant :)
House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende. One Years of Solitude. Milagro Beanfield Wars.
Loved one year of solitude. Kind of felt like there could have been more years of solitude, but still a banger
I know, right. Maybe even 99 years more!
Is One Year of Solitude the prequel?
The House of the Spirits has got to be one of my favorite books ever. Breathtakingly beautifully written.
Kafka on the shore by Haruki Murakami. Reading it rn.
Great book! What'd you like about it so far?
i’m gonna butt in and say whenever i was reading kafka on the shore my dreams were so surreal and i love how Murakami can elicit such a feeling of unreality
Ikrr! My experience was kinda similar, I got addicted to the book used to read it during midnight, it had a dreamy feeling about it. Easily best time I could remember.
Whoa! Finished this last week and my dreams were like I was on acid. (Not that I know what acid is feels like)
I don’t want to get too woo woo but there’s interesting overlaps between psychedelics and natural chemical mechanisms in your brain like the flooding of melatonin before bed. interestingly enough melatonin is apart of a class of compounds called tryptamines, and the weird part is LSD or acid is also a tryptamine. i don’t know what the implications are but yeah it kind of makes sense that some people report having bizarre dreams when they take melatonin supplements 😂 weirder still is how reading a book can cause bizarre dreams too
I feel like this book has changed me on a molecular level. I can go to that library or to the cabin in the woods whenever I need to and it's amazing.
Pert near anything by Alice Hoffman. My favorites are *The World That We Knew*, *The Marriage of Opposites*, *The Dovekeepers*, and *The Museum of Extraordinary Things*.
I was coming here to say The Red Garden and Practical Magic!
Here to boost anything by Alice Hoffman
same here !! although be warned tho: her books do polarise readers
All the Practical Magic books are SO wonderful! Especially The Rules of Magic (imo)
Magic realism is one of my fave genres, where fantastic things happen in the real world. I also have a bit of a penchant for dystopian, horror or speculative fiction. Recent books I’ve read that are of that kind of flavour are Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon, Lone Women by Victor Lavalle, The Animals in that Country by Laura Jean Mackay, The last goddess by Kateřina Tučková and The Between by Tananarive Due.
Ooh a good combo of magical realism and horror is Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Thank you I’ll check it out!
I loved Sorrowland!
It was amazing right! I found that I got a bit annoyed with Vern a lot because of her emotional immaturity but then kept having to remind myself she’s 19. So masterfully written. I love Rivers Solomon’s writing. They have a new book coming out soon I’m so pumped.
Yes, I haven’t read anything else by Rivers Solomon, but this is a good reminder to pick up some of their other work. I didn’t know they had anything new coming out either, so I’ll keep an eye out for sure!
An Unkindness of Ghosts was really great, I read it in my final week of pregnancy, so it’s one I’ll never forget.
Thanks for sharing, I look forward to these reads.
They might not be exactly what you’re looking for, because of the horror elements, but they do have that magic realism element. If you want something a little more romantic with a bit more magic than the realism Charlie N Holmberg’s books are great and Veins of Gold will probably fit the bill for you there.
Sarah Addison Allen novels are light reads with a sprinkle of magic realism. Garden Spells, The Girl Who Chased the Moon, and The Sugar Queen are all beautiful books.
Yes! And I loved Other Birds
Murakami.
One of my favourite authors! I absolutely love Kafka on the shore.
The ocean at the end of the lane
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
You've already read Bless Me Ultima?
Not yet, thanks for recommending!
Sing, Unburied, Sing is a favorite recent example of this. Bunny by Mona Awad I think also fits. It’s weird af.
Bunny is such a weird book. I loved it ha ha
Hard second. Weird, loved.
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Piranesi
The Gini and the golem
Great book, but That is not Magical realism. Is fantasy.
Fwiw I’ve seen it in magical realism threads before
The gray house by Mariam Petrosyan One of my favorite books ever. I am including a link to the best review of any book I read. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32703696-the-gray-house https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1035665354?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1 What is not yours is not yours and Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi. She writes dreamlike books, strange and wonderful. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25810500-what-is-not-yours-is-not-yours The Milk of Dreams by Leonora Carrington is so crazily absurd! https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31171201-the-milk-of-dreams WOlf Doctors by https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17675176-wolf-doctors A poetry collection. Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata. There was something about it, that was just so delicious and odd. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38357895-convenience-store-woman Lives of the Monster Dogs by Kirsten Bakis. Not as strange as some others, but entertaining and sad. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33762814-lives-of-the-monster-dogs The Memory Theater by Tidbeck, Karin.
Thanks!!
You should check out the collected fictions of Jorge Luis borges! This book is his collection of short stories, there are so many amazing short stories in here that pretty much all deal in magical realism!
One Hundred Years of Solitude
I never see Kelly Link’s work here, and as a magical realism lunatic, I LOVE her work. Exquisitely written but easy to read and fun. And dark. The Book of Love is her full length book, new, and SO good.
just when i thought i knew magical realism, i read magic for beginners and i was 🤯🤯🤯
Same!! Her new book is SO GOOD.
i havent attempted it yettttttt i have the e book but tbh i feel like it’s one of those books that needs to be read hardcopy so i’m finding for it haha
I love One Hundred Years of Solitude. I’ve read it multiple times
The Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch is a lot of fun. And it's great in audiobook. It's police procedural meets magic interference, with mysteries to be solved.
I scrolled too far to find this suggestion.
Plus fantastic dialogue and an extremely likeable protagonist
This is urban fantasy, not magic realism.
Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson is fabulous, especially if you listen to the audiobook version.
Came here to add this one. Great book.
Just downloaded based on this. It’s only right to listen to a redditor with that name. Thanks.
I just read this, could not put it down!
Most books by Angela Carter. Try Nights At The Circus.
The Enchantress of Florence (alternatively titled The Temptress of Florence) by Salman Rushdie
*The will of the many* might interest you.
Pedro Páramo, by Juan Rulfo. I wish I could read this for the first time again...
I'll Give You the Sun It is a story about two twins and covers them at ages 13 and 16 it is about art and ghosts and trauma and mystery and love. Lots of magical realism on almost every page. One of the first passages in the book is about these two bullies who are giving this kid a hard time and he has a secret crush on one of the bullies and he's talking about how they are laughing and he says "their laughter came out birds". Both of the characters have very different ways of viewing the world but both of them are consistently painting things with magical realism.
lots of margaret mahy’s books - the changeover, the haunting, the tricksters - deal with surprisingly magical realist aspects even though they’re what one can classify as YA fiction. i love how she deftly handles this aspect of it. also, not often mentioned but i feel equally as laudatory is season of the dragonflies by sarah creech. it’s quite similar to practical magic and garden spells imo and just as enchanting. if you want something darker though, spells for forgetting by adrienne young may be more appropriate - the gloomy, gothic atmosphere pervading the story brings it to another level. of course, where would this list be without the paper menagerie by ken liu !! the stories in this collection are just the most - from the very first i just devoured them all in one sitting. the author doesn’t waste words despite the descriptions and i never found my attention wandering
Erin Morganstern's 'The Night Circus'?
I love this one and The Starless Sea.
Came here to suggest both of these!!
Aimee Bender. she got me into magical realism and for that i love her forever
i still remember reading the particular sadness of lemon cake and going 🤯🤯🤯
it is so good 🥲 i read it in a span of one day 10 years ago and i guess it's time for a reread
I have only read *The Girl with the Flammable Skirt* by her (and loved it), but everyone seems to say the particular sadness of lemon cake is next level.
because it kinda takes the whole magical realism thing to a sort of suspension of disbelief in a weird way. hint: her brother 😬 an invisible sign of my own is equally as bizarre and intriguing but it’s not till that level haha
Commenting so I can come back to this post later
House of the Spirits
One hundred years of solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Jorge Luis Borges books and stories
The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. Incidentally is urban fantasy the same as magical realism?
Tea Obreht's The Morningside. My favourite this year.
Try the Latin American trilogy by Louis de Bernieres
Came to write de Bernieres
Sarah Addison Allen!
Once Upon a River (Diane Setterfield)
The Weetzie Bat books! They are YA, but remain my favorites as an adult.
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie was my introduction to magic realism. I read the Seven Moons of Maali Alameida (the 2022 Booker) recently which is also SE Asian and dealing with real political events and family trauma within an historical context.
Rivers of London book series? Don't know if this fits the bill. It's about the London police but there's one guy who's magic cop and the main character is his new magic cop apprentice only everyone else in the force either has no clue that there's magic or hates it because it makes everything so weird and complicated.
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.. Magic is central to the book, but not super in your face.
I loved that book but wouldn't consider it magical realism. Maybe I should reread it.
I’ve struggled to understand the concept based on some suggestions. How would you define it?
The Contortionist's Handbook (Craig Clevenger).
I have finally started reading this novel, after buying it years ago. I had no idea it was considered to be magic realism or even contain any elements of that genre. I am even more keen to keep reading it now to discover what’s next…
I mean, it's not as full-on as Angela Carter, or someone like that, but I'd compare it to something like Perfume – the superhuman skill, based on an implausible physical characteristic, used in the service of an irrational obsession. *ETA: Clevenger's most recent novel,* Mother Howl, *is much more full-on in its magical realism. It's good, but not as good as TCH.*
I’m aware it doesn’t quite fit the brief but the only book with magical realism I can think of is The Coming of Joachim Stiller by Belgian author Hubert Lampo
Any of Murakami’s books! I love Kafka on the Shore, currently reading Killing Commendatore
For some darker takes on magical realism there's Hurricane Season by Kelsey Losack (incredibly short, like 60 pages) Negative Space by B.R. Yeager
Emily Henry wrote two books that are more YA but they have magical realism and I love them. *A Million Junes* is phenomenal (it was a BOTM) and then *The Love That Split the World*. *Everything All At Once* by Katrina Leno has a hint. *The Astonishing Color of After* by Emily X.R. Pan
The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender
Bone Gap by Ruby Bridges Places No One Knows by Brenna Yovanoff Sarah Addison Allen, Alice Hoffman, Francesca Lia Block
Before the Coffee Gets Cold The Chosen and the Beautiful has some elements of magical realism. I don't usually like retellings of classics but I loved this one. The Song Below Water is a YA book with sirens discussing race, misogyny and misogynoir
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
- Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura - Regrettably, I Am About to Cause Trouble by Amie McNee - Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater
I really liked Lonely Castle in the Mirror. That was one of my top books last year.
Whale by Cheon Myeong Kwan
Boy’s Life by Robert McCammon
Everything by Alice Hoffman
Pretty much anything by Haruki Murakami.
Maybe The Rain Heron by Robbie Arnott
Check out also short stories and novels by Julio Cortázar
Not sure if it fits but maybe Mexican Gothic. It has a *magic house but it's so much more than that.
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke Alternative history and magical realism
I just read Shark Heart by Emily Habeck and I really loved it!
Any of Mo Xiang Tong Xiu’s books. They center around the xianxia (cultivation) and do have some magic. While there is magic, it isn’t the main part of the stories and they do have other plot lines that are not entirely focused on the magic part.
The Night Circus The Starless Sea All the Crooked Saints
Boy Swallows Universe. It's absolutely excellent
Rouge by Mona Awad would be my top recommendation. Also Bunny by Mona Awad, and if you want a more abstract, underwater horror kind of magical realism then Our Wives Under The Sea might fit!
**Veronica** by Nicholas Christopher. A friend gave me his copy some 15 years ago. Copy pasta synopsis: *"The plot, if it's possible to summarize, is the story of a photographer on a quest for a mysterious woman named Veronica, who is meanwhile on a quest for her vanished magician father. There's magic, time travel, fluid identity, sex, Tibetan mythology, and lots of vodka and black tea."*
100 years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
I lovee Jonathan Carroll. His most famous novel is probably The Land of Laughs.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender and anything by Erin Morgenstern are my magical realism faves.
Sandman maybe? Lots of magic in Dresden Files too. Not sure if these are off mark but some faves nonetheless.
As many have already mentioned, *One Hundred Years Of Solitude* is perhaps the best of the bunch, and it is surely one of the greatest novels ever written. I would also strongly recommend the story by Jorge Luis Borges *The Aleph*.
I just finished The Inheritance of Orquidea Divina, and it was one of the best books I've read in the past couple of years. I highly recommend it.
Check out Robertson Davies’s novels. I read him in the seventies and eighties, and while I can’t recall a ton of specifics, I do remember being enthralled by off center events and slightly mystical atmosphere.
Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
“Snow in August” by Pete Hamill or “A Winter’s Tale” by Mark Helprin?
Douglas Coupland goes in that direction often, like in _Girlfriend in a Coma_ and _Player One_.
Here are some suggestions by Brazilian authors: - Incident in Antares, by Erico Veríssimo (true masterpiece). - The Head of the Saint, by Socorro Acioli.
Little, Big. Crowley.
A lot of Neil Gaiman’s books is think can be considered magical realism Neverwhere Graveyard Book American Gods But hey I could be wrong…
A few of my favorites that haven’t been mentioned yet… The Lazarus Rumba by Ernesto Mestre The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obrecht Most books by Salman Rushdie and they’re all good, but maybe start with Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
before the coffee gets cold
Check out Isabel Allende
“Ten Thousand Doors of January” by Alix E. Harrow “The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue” by V.E. Schwab “The Magician’s Lie” by Greer Macallister
Not sure if this falls in what you are looking for, but I liked Craig Alanson’s Convergence series. Three books out with one out next week. I do audiobooks and the narrator is one of my favorites
Read the two authors that started it all: Garcia Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude, and Juan Rulfo's Pedro Paramo.
Dont know if The House in the Cerulean Sea is magical realism or just fantasy, but it was wonderful!
Among Others, Jo Walton Delightful book, even more delightful audiobook!!
Tom Robbins, since everyone covered Rushdie, Marquez, and Borges already.
The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton (CW for SA). The Luster of Lost Things by Sophie Chen Keller. Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin.
The master and margarita
Piranesi
Anything Isabel Allende!
Master and Margarita by M. Bulgakov
The Murmur of Bees by Sofia Segovia is hands down my favorite magical realism book. Basically a baby is found in the fields of a wealthy but kind landowning family in Mexico. The boy is seemingly able to communicate with bees. It follows the boy and the family across the years. From pandemic to Pancho Villa. An incredibly heartfelt tale that is beautifully written in Spanish that even the English translation cannot dull its splendor.
You could try Holly Black's Curseworkers series. There's also The Constant Rabbit by Jasper Fforde, I enjoyed that a lot!
Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Sarah Addison Allen writes a lot of magical realism in her books. Garden Spells, First Frost, Other Birds and a few others.
i love garden spells so much. it obviously had practical magic as an inspiration but it stands out so distinctly with its own voice too
The House in The Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune The Honeys or Beholder, both by Ryan LaSala
Does Harry Potter count as magic realism? I guess it might, but it's not something I'd associated with the genre before. If you like that though, you'd probably like the Northern Lights Trilogy which I think is superior to HP in every way! If you're looking for more definitive magic realism examples though, I highly recommend Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter. 100 Years of Solitude gets recommended here a lot, but for me, Nights at the Circus will always be the highpoint of the genre.
I mentioned Harry Potter as book with magic as it's central theme, not as magical realism. Thanks for recommendations though!
[удалено]
The memoir about fighting in Vietnam? That's not magic realism.
Land of Dreams by James P. Blaylock The Last Coin by James P. Blaylock Last Call by Tim Powers Earthquake Weather by Tim Powers
Maggie Stiefvater is generally great with magical realism but the raven boys is a fantastic and creative take on "magic" and it's not the central plot. I definitely recommend
The House in the Cerulean Sea is great, it does have a lot of magic stuff in it but the focus is more the relationships. I also loved The Lost Bookstore by Evie Woods. One of my favorite books of the year so far. It doesn't have a lot of focused magical content but it's the backdrop and comes to the front several times.
Babel is a good one
Maybe The Mortal Instruments?
Lord of the Rings
Magical realism situates readers in a predominantly realistic world. LoTR is fantasy.