Editing Magical realism (section)

== Description ==
The term ''magic realism'' is broadly [[Linguistic description|descriptive]] rather than critically rigorous, and Matthew Strecher (1999) defines it as "what happens when a highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by something too strange to believe."<ref>Strecher, Matthew C. 1999. "Magical Realism and the Search for Identity in the Fiction of Murakami Haruki." ''[[Journal of Japanese Studies]]'' 25(2):263–98. p. 267.</ref> The term and its wide definition can often become confused, as many writers are categorized as magical realists. The term was influenced by a German and Italian painting style of the 1920s which were given the same name.<ref name="Bowers, Maggie A. 2004" /> In ''[[The Art of Fiction (book)|The Art of Fiction]]'', British novelist and critic [[David Lodge (author)|David Lodge]] defines magic realism: "when marvellous and impossible events occur in what otherwise purports to be a realistic narrative—is an effect especially associated with contemporary Latin American fiction (for example the work of the Colombian novelist [[Gabriel García Márquez]]) but it is also encountered in novels from other continents, such as those of [[Günter Grass]], [[Salman Rushdie]] and [[Milan Kundera]]. All these writers have lived through great historical convulsions and wrenching personal upheavals, which they feel cannot be adequately represented in a discourse of undisturbed realism", citing Kundera's 1979 novel ''[[The Book of Laughter and Forgetting]]'' as an exemplar."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lodge |first=David |title=[[The Art of Fiction (book)|The Art of Fiction]] |publisher=1992}}</ref> [[Michiko Kakutani]] writes that "The transactions between the extraordinary and the mundane that occur in so much Latin American fiction are not merely a literary technique, but also a mirror of a reality in which the fantastic is frequently part of everyday life."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Kakutani |first=Michiko |date=February 24, 1989 |title=Critic's Notebook: Telling Truth Through Fantasy: Rushdie's Magic Realism |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/99/04/18/specials/rushdie-realism.html}}</ref> Magical realism often mixes history and fantasy, as in [[Salman Rushdie]]'s ''[[Midnight's Children]]'', in which the children born at midnight on August 15, 1947, the moment of India's independence, are telepathically linked.

Irene Guenther (1995) tackles the German roots of the term, and how an earlier magic realist art is related to a later magic realist literature;<ref name="Guenther1995">{{cite book|last=Guenther|first=Irene|title=Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community|date=1995|publisher=Duke University Press|isbn=0-8223-1640-4|editor=Lois Parkinson Zamora|pages=[https://archive.org/details/magicalrealismth0000unse/page/33 33–73]|chapter=Magic Realism, New Objectivity, and the Arts during the Weimar Republic|editor2=Wendy B. Faris|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/magicalrealismth0000unse/page/33}}</ref> meanwhile, magical realism is often associated with [[Latin American literature|Latin-American literature]], including founders of the genre, particularly the authors [[Gabriel García Márquez]], [[Isabel Allende]], [[Jorge Luis Borges]], [[Juan Rulfo]], [[Miguel Ángel Asturias]], [[Elena Garro]], [[Mireya Robles]], [[Rómulo Gallegos]], [[Alejo Carpentier]] and [[Arturo Uslar Pietri]]. In [[English literature]], its chief exponents include [[Neil Gaiman]], [[Salman Rushdie]], [[Alice Hoffman]], [[Louis De Bernieres]], [[Nick Joaquin]], and [[Nicola Barker]]. In [[Russian literature]], key proponents include [[Mikhail Bulgakov]], [[Soviet dissidents|Soviet dissident]] [[Andrei Sinyavsky]] and the playwright [[Nina Sadur]]. In [[Bengali literature]], prominent writers of magic realism include [[Nabarun Bhattacharya]], [[Akhteruzzaman Elias]], [[Shahidul Zahir]], [[Jibanananda Das]] and [[Syed Waliullah]]. In [[Kannada literature]], the writers [[Shivaram Karanth]] and [[Devanur Mahadeva]] have infused magical realism in their most prominent works. In [[Japanese literature]], one of the most important authors of this genre is [[Haruki Murakami]]. In [[Chinese literature]] the best-known writer of the style is [[Mo Yan]], the 2012 [[Nobel Prize in Literature|Nobel Prize laureate in Literature]] for his "[[hallucinatory realism]]". In [[Polish literature]], magic realism is represented by [[Olga Tokarczuk]], the 2018 Nobel Prize laureate in Literature.