#sorry this isnt kpop related
Magical Realism:“A primarily realistic view of the real world while also adding or revealing magical elements… [Characterized by the use of] magic or the supernatural in an otherwise real-world or mundane setting.”
For the lovely anon who asked for book recommendations <3 All descriptions taken from Goodreads. Please note that some of these books may contain mature topics or content. Reader discretion is advised.
An asterisk (*) denotes one of my all-time favorite books!
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Japan’s most highly regarded novelist now vaults into the first ranks of international fiction writers with this heroically imaginative novel, which is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II.
Plain Kate(*) by Erin Bow (Note: This is more fantasy rather than magical realism, but I don’t have enough fantasy favorites to make a separate list so…)
Plain Kate lives in a world of superstitions and curses, where a song can heal a wound and a shadow can work deep magic. As the wood-carver’s daughter, Kate held a carving knife before a spoon, and her wooden charms are so fine that some even call her “witch-blade” – a dangerous nickname in a town where witches are hunted and burned in the square.
Kafka on the Shore (*) by Haruki Murakami
Kafka on the Shore is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura […] and an aging simpleton called Nakata […]. As their paths converge, and the reasons for that convergence become clear, Haruki Murakami enfolds readers in a world where cats talk, fish fall from the sky, and spirits slip out of their bodies to make love or commit murder.
The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender(*) by Leslye Walton
Foolish love appears to be the Roux family birthright, an ominous forecast for its most recent progeny, Ava Lavender. Ava—in all other ways a normal girl—is born with the wings of a bird.
The Ocean at the End of the Laneby Neil Gaiman
A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. […] [He] is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. […] [As] he sits by the pond […], the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.
The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld
The enchanted place is an ancient stone prison, viewed through the eyes of a death row inmate who finds escape in his books and in re-imagining life around him, weaving a fantastical story of the people he observes and the world he inhabits. […] Two outsiders venture here: a fallen priest, and the Lady, an investigator who searches for buried information from prisoners’ pasts that can save those soon-to-be-executed. Digging into the background of a killer named York, she uncovers wrenching truths that challenge familiar notions of victim and criminal, innocence and guilt, honour and corruption-ultimately revealing shocking secrets of her own.
The Little Prince (*) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (It could be arguable if this is magical realism or not… but I like it too much to not put it on this list, haha.)
[The Little Prince] tells the story of a little boy who leaves the safety of his own tiny planet to travel the universe, learning the vagaries of adult behaviour through a series of extraordinary encounters. His personal odyssey culminates in a voyage to Earth and further adventures.
