Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez may be considered the fountainhead of magic realism or magical realism, but it was the German photographer, writer and art critic Franz Roh who coined the word. He wrote a book in 1925 – Post-expressionism: Problems of the newest European Painting in which Roh devised the word magic realism. There is a lot of confusion about the definition of magic realism.
Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms says, “A kind of modern fiction in which fabulous and fantastical events are included in a narrative that otherwise maintains the reliable tone of objective realistic report.” ‘The Tin Drum’ by German author Gunter Grass has the feature called magic element. Grass writes: “When Satan’s not in the mood, virtue triumphs.
Hasn’t even Satan a right not to be in the mood once in a while?” The Tin Drum is a satirical novel, but it consists of many other elements like picaresque, farce and fantasy. Grass’s Indian counterpart Salman Rushdie has magical realism in his novels, like Midnight’s Children, Satanic Verses and Quichotte. In such novels, characters are limned with fantastic attributes – levitation, flight, telepathy, and telekinesis – to portray the political realities of a particular era.
Likewise, Baltasar and Blimunda by Jose Saramago, who got the Nobel Prize in literature in 1998, weaves a captivating tale of love and ambition against the backdrop of 18th century Portugal where .