Magical Realism Books You Need To Read
From memorable classics like The House of the Spirits to onscreen wonders like The Shape of Water, magical realism offers audiences the opportunity to look at the world from a different angle. The familiar becomes strange, and the strange in return becomes ordinary. Through study and innovation, literary visionaries examine the complexities of being human by building worlds that are unexpected yet resonate deeply with readers. Through the unfamiliar, deeper truths are revealed. Magical realism — along with fabulism and speculative fiction — is a genre whose narratives foster empathy, awe, and compassion. Consider this reading list an invitation to see the world through a different lens, an invitation to be transformed by the page.
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Add to BookshelfAwayland
by Ramona Ausubel
Crisscrossing the pages of Awayland are travelers and expats, shadows and ghosts. A girl watches as her homesick mother slowly dissolves into literal mist. A chef bound for Mars begins an even more treacherous journey much closer to home. And a lonely heart searches for love online—never mind that he’s a Cyclops. With her signature tenderness, Ramona Ausubel applies a mapmaker’s eye to landscapes both real and imagined, all the while providing a keen guide to the wild, uncharted terrain of the human heart.
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Land of Love and Drowning
by Tiphanie Yanique
Tiphanie Yanique’s dazzling Land of Love and Drowning follows the descendants of Captain Bradshaw — whose sunken ship and destructive habits alter the fate of his family — as they grapple with the past and the present. As adults, Eeona, Annette, and their half-brother Jacob are confronted with their inner demons as their family’s history overshadows the path each sibling has chosen for themselves. Alongside the mesmerizing saga of a family trying to make sense of their collective past, Yanique intertwines Caribbean lore, and a timely critique of colonialism with ceaseless heart and vibrant prose. As satisfying as it is beautiful, Yanqiue’s novel is a deserving successor to the literary tradition of Isabel Allende, Gabriel García Márquez, and Bessie Head.
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All the Names They Used for God
by Anjali Sachdeva
Anjali Sachdeva’s debut collection is a force to be reckoned with. Engrossing from start to finish, All the Names They Used for God bridges the gap between speculative fiction, magical realism, and mythology with ease. Through a host of hauntingly relatable characters brought to life by Sachdeva’s subtle yet searing prose, this collection confronts the joys and harms of intimacy, the way loss can change a person, and the existential weight of mortality. Whether it be a mermaid caught in a fisherman’s net or the aftermath of an uncanny alien invasion, each page of Sachdeva’s collection is infused with undeniable truth.
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The Book of Form and Emptiness
by Ruth Ozeki
In this brilliantly inventive new novel, a boy hears the voices of objects all around him, a mother develops a hoarding problem and begins drowning in her possessions, and a Book is discovered that might hold the secret to saving them both. Poignant, playful, and wise, this book will take readers on an adventure unlike any they have even imagined.
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Gods of Jade and Shadow
by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Growing up in a small town in southern Mexico, Casiopea Tun dreams of a life she can call her own. This new life seems impossible until they day she finds a curious wooden box and accidentally frees the spirit of the Mayan god of death. He requests her help in recovering his throne from his brother. To deny the god would be death, but to accept would make her wildest dreams come true, and so Casiopea begins a journey that will take her across Mexico and into the Mayan underworld.
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The Charmed Wife
by Olga Grushin
In this fairy tale for the modern world, Cinderella realizes that “happily ever after” is more of a suggestion than an actual reality and so decides to seek out a witch who will help make a potion that will kill Prince Charming. As she goes on this quest nothing is quite what it seems—with twists and turns through magical, dark, and swiftly shifting paths that take us deep into the heart of what makes us unique, of romance and marriage, and of the very nature of storytelling.
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Beloved
by Toni Morrison
This literary masterpiece is a brutal and beautiful story about a young woman who is born into slavery and escaped to Ohio. But eighteen years later she is still not free, as she is haunted by her memories of the farm where she lived, and the ghost of her baby whose gravestone displays a single word: Beloved. This spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby.
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Vampires in the Lemon Grove
by Karen Russell
Vampires in the Lemon Grove is a marvelous short story collection that will transport you to places you never could have imagined. In these pages you’ll meet a community of girls held captive in a Japanese silk factory as they slowly change into human silkworms and plot revolution; a family’s disastrous quest for land in the American West; and two vampires in a sun-drenched lemon grove try to slake their thirst for blood and come to terms with their immortal relationship.
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Get in Trouble
by Kelly Link
A reminder of why Link’s name has become synonymous with magical realism, Get in Trouble turns the familiar on its head in a refreshingly unexpected way. Like an alchemist, Link transforms the ordinary into the otherworldly with each vivid sentence. The pages of Get in Trouble are a masterful balance between humor, horror, and folklore where romances coincide with phantasms, evil twins are real, and any messages divined from a Ouija board should be taken with a grain (or two) of salt. From beginning to end, Link’s countless strengths as a storyteller shine brightly. It’s difficult to read this collection without getting swept away.
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Quichotte
by Salman Rushdie
Inspired by the Cervantes classic, Sam DuChamp, mediocre writer of spy thrillers, creates Quichotte, a courtly, addled salesman obsessed with television who falls in impossible love with a TV star. Together with his (imaginary) son Sancho, Quichotte sets off on a picaresque quest across America to prove worthy of her hand, gallantly braving the tragicomic perils of an age where “Anything-Can-Happen.” Meanwhile, his creator, in a midlife crisis, has equally urgent challenges of his own.
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Of Love and Other Demons
by Gabriel García Márquez
On her twelfth birthday, Sierva Maria is bitten by a rabid dog. Believed to be possessed, she is brought to a convent for observation. And into her cell stumbles Father Cayetano Delaura. As he tends to her with holy water and sacramental oils, Delaura feels something shocking begin to occur. He has fallen in love—and it is not long until Sierva Maria joins him in his fevered misery. Unsettling and indelible, Of Love and Other Demons is an evocative, majestic tale of the most universal experiences known to woman and man.
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What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky
by Lesley Nneka Arimah
Lesley Nneka Arimah’s award-winning debut collection What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky is an undeniably satisfying tour-de-force. In each story, Arimah’s protagonists search for wholeness in worlds where infants made of hair can break a mother’s heart, the bodies of men fall from the heavens, and linearity is obsolete. Every story in this collection should be revisited and enjoyed often. A shining example of the power of subverting convention as a way to reveal and confront the realities of our contemporary moment, Arimah’s fiction will make you view the world around you with a new sense of wonder.
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The Melancholy of Anatomy
by Shelley Jackson
For readers who love language as much as they love unpredictable plotlines, Shelley Jackson’s collection is a literary godsend. Published in 2002, the stories in The Melancholy of Anatomy thematically pay homage to the 17th century concept of the four humors: Choleric, Melancholic, Phlegmatic and Sanguine. In Jackson’s unique and unnerving world, a woman is compelled and consumed by an egg, a fetus becomes a spiritual leader, the streets of London are covered with menstrual blood, and nerves are manufactured in a factory. A visceral exploration of embodiment and identity, her work will bring to mind the innovative wit of writers like Clarice Lispector and Helen Oyeyemi.
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The Grass Dancer
by Mona Susan Power
An epic in its own right, The Grass Dancer by Susan Power is a fascinating and heartrending novel about family, trauma, love, and resilience. Power’s novel takes place on a reservation in North Dakota where generations of Dakota Sioux wrestle with the weight of history, the sting of poverty, the unpredictable nature of romance, and the limitless power of ancestral magic. With riveting language and depth, Power’s narrative deftly intertwines centuries of struggle and triumph with an immediacy that sinks deep into the hearts and minds of her audience. The Grass Dancer is undeniably an under-celebrated classic deserving of praise.
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The Night Circus
by Erin Morgenstern
In Le Cirque des Rêves there is something brewing, unbeknownst to the patrons who watch the breathtaking amazements under the big top. Two young magicians, Celia and Marco, have been set up to duel each other by their mentors. But what they don’t know is that only one magician can remain alive…
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The Bear and the Nightingale
by Katherine Arden
Winter lasts most of the year at the edge of the Russian wilderness. In order to protect their village, Vasya and her family honor the spirits that protect their homes from evil. But when Vasya’s widowed father brings home a new wife who is very devout, she forbids the family from honoring these spirits, and misfortune begins to stalk the village. As the evil from the forest creeps nearer, Vasya must call upon dangerous gifts she has long concealed to protect everything she holds dear.
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Gold Diggers
by Sanjena Sathian
Growing up in the Atlanta suburbs, Neil Narayan is funny and smart but struggles to bear the wait of his family’s expectations. He should be more focused on trying to achieve their version of success, but all he can think about is his neighbor, Anita Dayal. When Neil learns that Anita has access to an ancient potion made from stolen gold, he sees a chance to finally get ahead. But drinking the golden “lemonade” will send his world spiraling.
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The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
by Haruki Murakami
In a Tokyo suburb, a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife’s missing cat—and then for his wife as well—in the netherworld beneath the city’s placid surface. Along the way he will encounter a bizarre group of allies and antagonists. Gripping, prophetic, and suffused with comedy and menace, this is an astonishing imaginative detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets from Japan’s forgotten campaign in Manchuria during World War II.
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The Midnight Library: A GMA Book Club Pick
by Matt Haig
At the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books. One tells the story of your life as it is, and the other books show what your life could have been if you had made different choices. Would any of these other lives truly be better? In Matt Haig’s enchanting novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision, and as she travels through the Midnight Library she must decide what is truly fulfilling in life and what makes it worth living in the first place.
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When We Were Birds
by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo
The women in Yejide’s family have always helped to usher the city’s souls into the afterlife. But with her mother’s growing illness, Yejide is looking for a way out of the family business. On the other side of town, Darwin, who has been raised by a devout Rastafarian mother has always abided the religious commandment to not interact with death. But when the only job he can find is grave digging, he must betray his mother in order to provide for them. When We Were Birds is a spellbinding and hopeful novel about inheritance, loss, and love’s seismic power to heal.
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Garden Spells
by Sarah Addison Allen
In a small town in North Carolina, the Waverley family is infamous for their garden’s surreal delights, like edible flowers imbued with magical powers and an apple tree that bears fruit that can predict the future. Claire Waverley believed herself to be the last of her family, after her sister Sydney fled town, leaving her to tend the garden alone. But when Sydney reappears suddenly with a daughter of her own, Claire’s careful life is turned upside down. Readers, be careful because this book casts a spell with a style all its own…
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Vanessa Yu’s Magical Paris Tea Shop
by Roselle Lim
Ever since she was a little girl, Vanessa Yu has been able to see people’s fortunes at the bottom of their teacups. She thought that by drinking coffee she would be able to get hide her gift, but somehow fortunes escape complicating her life and the lives of those around her. When her aunt offers to take her to Paris for the summer, Vanessa jumps at the chance. In the City of Lights she will learn more about herself and her gifts and discovers that knowing one’s destiny isn’t a curse, but being unable to change it is.
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Klara and the Sun: A GMA Book Club Pick
by Kazuo Ishiguro
From the author of Never Let Me Go and Remains of the Day comes a breathtaking novel about love and loneliness. Here we meet Klara, an Artificial Friend who spends her days observing humans, those that browse the store and those who wander outside. She longs to one day be selected by these people, a group she understands so well, and yet can never really be a part of. You’ll never be able to look at artificial intelligence the same way again.
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Midnight’s Children
by Salman Rushdie
Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight, at the very moment of India’s independence. As he grows up, he begins to realize that his life is inextricably linked to that of his nation. Everything from his health to his finances perfectly parallel that of his country. And even more remarkable is the telepathic powers that link Saleem with India’s 1,000 other “midnight’s children,” who were all born in that fateful hour and who all hold magical gifts.
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Peaces
by Helen Oyeyemi
When Otto and Xavier Shin declare their love, an aunt gifts them a trip on a sleeper train to mark their new commitment. But Otto and Xavier soon find that this trip is like no other. Each detail is beyond their wildest imaginations, and it appears that they are the only two passengers on board, until a mysterious woman appears delivering an even more mysterious omen. A spellbinding tale from a star author, Peaces is about what it means to be seen by another person—whether it’s your lover or a stranger on a train—and what happens when things you thought were firmly in the past turn out to be right beside you.
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A Long Petal of the Sea
by Isabel Allende
Magical realism meets historical fiction in his impressive work about hope, exile, and belonging, from author Isabel Allende. In the 1930s Spain is thrown into a turbulent civil war, leaving thousands of people no choice but to flee. Two of these people are Roser, a young pregnant widow, and Victor Dalmau, an army doctor and the brother of Roser’s deceased love. They make an unlikely pair, but the two must form a partnership if they want to survive their journey, and their new life in exile.
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The Rock Eaters
by Brenda Peynado
Spanning worlds and dimensions, this story collection asks what it means to be labeled “other.” Using strange and speculative elements, Peynado tackles issues ranging from class differences to immigration to first-generation experiences to xenophobia. Her stories reflect our flawed world, and the incredible, terrifying, and marvelous nature of humanity.
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The Water Dancer
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her—but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known.
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