Magical Realism

Magical realism

Partha Desikan

This is what Wikipedia has to say about the accomplished octogenarian Colombian Nobel Laureate in Literature, Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez.

Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez (born March 6, 1927) is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist. García Márquez, familiarly known as "Gabo" in his native country, is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century.

In 1982, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He pursued a self-directed education that resulted in his leaving law school for a career in journalism. From early on, he showed no inhibitions in his criticism of Colombian and foreign politics. In 1958, he married Mercedes Barcha and they have two sons.

He started as a journalist, and has written many acclaimed non-fiction works and short stories, but is best-known for his novels, such as One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). His works have achieved significant critical acclaim and widespread commercial success, most notably for popularizing a literary style labeled as magical realism, which uses magical elements and events in order to explain real experiences. Some of his works are set in a fictional village called Macondo, and most of them express the theme of solitude.

Sri Srivirinchi's English translation of Munipalle Raju's ‘Satyagraha in Naimisaranya', a love story with a remarkable end, written first in Telugu, has been published in the Sep-Oct 2008 issue of Muse India, the literary e journal, and the link for you to peruse it is

In the story, the backdrop is Naimisaranya, the birthplace of India's Vedic revelations, and the author goes again and again into the past, while holding on to his main story. Sage Vyasa's puranic skills thus get woven into Sri Raju's own fictional narrative. The Sage's capacity for smooth blend of the magical with the possible thus becomes a tool also in the hands of Sri Raju.

One is therefore not surprised, when he makes the following final remark (given of course in Sri Srivirinchi's English translation).

(Writer's note: The literary genre "Magic Realism" in Short-story is not the creation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Vyasa was the one who brought it first to the earth.)