If there's one author who's a superstar within Magic Realism, it's totally Gabriel García Márquez. He's the guy who made Magic Realism into a global phenomenon with the publication of his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. In fact, he won the Nobel Prize in 1982 largely because of his role in the development of Magic Realism.

In Márquez's works, anything can happen. People fly when they drink hot chocolate, an old man with enormous wings lands in someone's backyard, a baby is born with a pig's tail. Márquez is famous for his narrative style, which treats these magical events like regular, everyday occurrences.

One Hundred Years of Solitude

This is the novel that made Magic Realism the coolest thing around. It tells the story of one family living in a fictional town called Macondo in Colombia. Magical events happen all the time in Macondo, and the novel's protagonists take it all in stride. It's just a part of the world that they live in.

The novel is famous for its matter-of-fact narrative style, which treats the fantastic as if it's ordinary and the ordinary as if it's fantastic: this novel really messes with our sense of reality. García Márquez famously said that he wrote the novel in the same tone of voice that his grandmother used to tell him ghost stories when he was a child. She used to talk about ghosts, and the supernatural, as though they were just, like, real.

"A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings"

García Márquez's short story is a great introduction to Magical Realism. It's short, it's fun, and it's got an old dude with enormous wings who just up lands in someone's backyard one day. Is he an angel? Is he Superman? Nah, he's just some guy with wings. No biggie.

Here you'll find Márquez's famous matter-of-fact narrative voice, a bunch of fantastic events, and, of course, a good dose of regular, everyday life.

Chew on This:

One Hundred Years of Solitude is full of the magical and the fantastic.

"A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" is a great introduction to Gabriel García Márquez's Magical Realist style. And, hey, it's only a few pages long.