What Is Magic Realism?
Briefly, the concept of Magic Realism has to do with the concept of “heightened reality” or the addition of another dimension of reality through a symbolic or metaphoric structure. It gives us a new way of perceiving the world, as if through a child looking at the world for the first time. The term is a derivation of “lo real maravilloso” which means literally, “The Marvelous Reality.” Alejo Carpentier (l904-l980), a Cuban historian, is credited with coming up with this term in l949. Readers who want to have a general overview of Magic Realist writing need only turn to a collection by Barbara Howes, Eye of the Heart, to get a good idea of the basic format of this marvelous writing. Recent movies have had a major impact on public awareness about Magic Realism. The most well known movie is probably Like Water for Chocolate (based on the book by Laura Esquivel, it was the highest grossing foreign film of all time until The Postman took the honor two years later). Other more recent movies:
