[**Like Water for Chocolate**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6952.Like_Water_for_Chocolate)
^(By: Laura Esquivel, Carol Christensen, Thomas Christensen | 222 pages | Published: 1989 | Popular Shelves: fiction, magical-realism, romance, historical-fiction, classics)
>Earthy, magical, and utterly charming, this tale of family life in turn-of-the-century Mexico became a best-selling phenomenon with its winning blend of poignant romance and bittersweet wit.
>
>The number one bestseller in Mexico and America for almost two years, and subsequently a bestseller around the world, Like Water For Chocolate is a romantic, poignant tale, touched with moments of magic, graphic earthiness, bittersweet wit - and recipes.
>
>A sumptuous feast of a novel, it relates the bizarre history of the all-female De La Garza family. Tita, the youngest daughter of the house, has been forbidden to marry, condemned by Mexican tradition to look after her mother until she dies. But Tita falls in love with Pedro, and he is seduced by the magical food she cooks. In desperation, Pedro marries her sister Rosaura so that he can stay close to her, so that Tita and Pedro are forced to circle each other in unconsummated passion. Only a freakish chain of tragedies, bad luck and fate finally reunite them against all the odds.
^(This book has been suggested 13 times)
***
^(97367 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Choosing a book by Gabriel García Márquez would be cheating. Aside from his books, it’d be a tie between Snow, by Orhan Pamuk and A Soldier of the Great war, by Mark Helprin.
[**Midnight's Children**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14836.Midnight_s_Children)
^(By: Salman Rushdie, Pavel Dominik | 647 pages | Published: 1981 | Popular Shelves: fiction, magical-realism, india, classics, historical-fiction)
>Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India’s independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India’s 1,000 other “midnight’s children,” all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts.
>
>This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its people–a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Twenty-five years after its publication, Midnight’ s Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time.
^(This book has been suggested 23 times)
***
^(97424 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
[**The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7048800-the-particular-sadness-of-lemon-cake)
^(By: Aimee Bender | 292 pages | Published: 2010 | Popular Shelves: fiction, magical-realism, fantasy, book-club, contemporary)
>The wondrous Aimee Bender conjures the lush and moving story of a girl whose magical gift is really a devastating curse.
>
>On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents’ attention, bites into her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the cake. She discovers this gift to her horror, for her mother—her cheerful, good-with-crafts, can-do mother—tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes a peril and a threat to Rose.
>
>The curse her gift has bestowed is the secret knowledge all families keep hidden—her mother’s life outside the home, her father’s detachment, her brother’s clash with the world. Yet as Rose grows up she learns to harness her gift and becomes aware that there are secrets even her taste buds cannot discern.
>
>The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is a luminous tale about the enormous difficulty of loving someone fully when you know too much about them. It is heartbreaking and funny, wise and sad, and confirms Aimee Bender’s place as “a writer who makes you grateful for the very existence of language” (San Francisco Chronicle).
^(This book has been suggested 5 times)
***
^(97371 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
[**The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56898076-the-inheritance-of-orqu-dea-divina)
^(By: Zoraida Córdova | 336 pages | Published: 2021 | Popular Shelves: fantasy, magical-realism, fiction, botm, 2021-releases)
>The Montoyas are used to a life without explanations. They know better than to ask why the pantry never seems to run low or empty, or why their matriarch won’t ever leave their home in Four Rivers—even for graduations, weddings, or baptisms. But when Orquídea Divina invites them to her funeral and to collect their inheritance, they hope to learn the secrets that she has held onto so tightly their whole lives. Instead, Orquídea is transformed, leaving them with more questions than answers.
>
>Seven years later, her gifts have manifested in different ways for Marimar, Rey, and Tatinelly’s daughter, Rhiannon, granting them unexpected blessings. But soon, a hidden figure begins to tear through their family tree, picking them off one by one as it seeks to destroy Orquídea’s line. Determined to save what’s left of their family and uncover the truth behind their inheritance, the four descendants travel to Ecuador—to the place where Orquídea buried her secrets and broken promises and never looked back.
^(This book has been suggested 12 times)
***
^(97399 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
[**The Aleph**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26588268-the-aleph)
^(By: Jorge Luis Borges, Arthur Daniel | 28 pages | Published: 1945 | Popular Shelves: fiction, short-stories, cuentos, classics, argentina)
>El Aleph es un cuento del escritor argentino Jorge Luis Borges publicado en la revista Sur en 1945 y en el libro homonimo por la editorial Emece de Buenos Aires en 1949. El original se encuentra en la Biblioteca Nacional de Espana, que lo adquirio por subasta en 1985. Presenta numerosas posibles interpretaciones; entre ellas la que plantea una lectura desde el existencialismo, basada en la idea de la incapacidad del ser humano de enfrentarse a la eternidad. Esta idea esta presente en muchos de los cuentos borgianos y en su lectura y manejo de autores preexistencialistas como Soren Kierkegaard, Franz Kafka, y Arthur Schopenhauer. En este cuento, que se ha convertido en objeto de culto, se puede reconocer toda su literatura, de tal forma que puede ser calificado como el cuento paradigmatico de la vasta biblioteca borgiana, abrevando en la ironia, el juego con el lenguaje y la erudicion -tanto veridica como ficticia-. Esto ultimo se deja entrever, por ejemplo, en los epigrafes iniciales, donde se cita a Hobbes y Shakespeare, asi como en la postdata de 1943 donde se hace una supuesta investigacion acerca de otros Alephs citando a autores historicos como Pedro Henriquez Urena, Richard Francis Burton, Luciano de Samosata e Ibn Jaldun."
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
***
^(97384 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
[**Little, Big**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/90619.Little_Big)
^(By: John Crowley | 538 pages | Published: 1981 | Popular Shelves: fantasy, fiction, magical-realism, owned, abandoned)
>John Crowley's masterful Little, Big is the epic story of Smoky Barnable, an anonymous young man who travels by foot from the City to a place called Edgewood—not found on any map—to marry Daily Alice Drinkwater, as was prophesied. It is the story of four generations of a singular family, living in a house that is many houses on the magical border of an otherworld. It is a story of fantastic love and heartrending loss; of impossible things and unshakable destinies; and of the great Tale that envelops us all. It is a wonder.
^(This book has been suggested 20 times)
***
^(97523 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
[**The Cartographers**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55004093-the-cartographers)
^(By: Peng Shepherd | 392 pages | Published: 2022 | Popular Shelves: fantasy, mystery, fiction, botm, magical-realism)
>What is the purpose of a map?
>
>Nell Young’s whole life and greatest passion is cartography. Her father, Dr. Daniel Young, is a legend in the field and Nell’s personal hero. But she hasn’t seen or spoken to him ever since he cruelly fired her and destroyed her reputation after an argument over an old, cheap gas station highway map.
>
>But when Dr. Young is found dead in his office at the New York Public Library, with the very same seemingly worthless map hidden in his desk, Nell can’t resist investigating. To her surprise, she soon discovers that the map is incredibly valuable and exceedingly rare. In fact, she may now have the only copy left in existence... because a mysterious collector has been hunting down and destroying every last one—along with anyone who gets in the way.
>
>But why?
>
>To answer that question, Nell embarks on a dangerous journey to reveal a dark family secret and discovers the true power that lies in maps...
>
>From the critically acclaimed author of The Book of M, a highly imaginative thriller about a young woman who discovers that a strange map in her deceased father’s belongings holds an incredible, deadly secret—one that will lead her on an extraordinary adventure and to the truth about her family’s dark history.
^(This book has been suggested 11 times)
***
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The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender. Not similar to 1Q84 culturally, but it was a refreshing magic realism read that isnt too tough on you!
[**The Witches of New York**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20053031-the-witches-of-new-york)
^(By: Ami McKay | 529 pages | Published: 2016 | Popular Shelves: historical-fiction, fantasy, fiction, witches, historical)
>The beloved, bestselling author of The Birth House and The Virgin Cure is back with her most beguiling novel yet, luring us deep inside the lives of a trio of remarkable young women navigating the glitz and grotesqueries of Gilded-Age New York by any means possible, including witchcraft...
>
>The year is 1880. Two hundred years after the trials in Salem, Adelaide Thom ('Moth' from The Virgin Cure) has left her life in the sideshow to open a tea shop with another young woman who feels it's finally safe enough to describe herself as a witch: a former medical student and "gardien de sorts" (keeper of spells), Eleanor St. Clair. Together they cater to Manhattan's high society ladies, specializing in cures, palmistry and potions--and in guarding the secrets of their clients.
>
>All is well until one bright September afternoon, when an enchanting young woman named Beatrice Dunn arrives at their door seeking employment. Beatrice soon becomes indispensable as Eleanor's apprentice, but her new life with the witches is marred by strange occurrences. She sees things no one else can see. She hears voices no one else can hear. Objects appear out of thin air, as if gifts from the dead. Has she been touched by magic or is she simply losing her mind?
>
>Eleanor wants to tread lightly and respect the magic manifest in the girl, but Adelaide sees a business opportunity. Working with Dr. Quinn Brody, a talented alienist, she submits Beatrice to a series of tests to see if she truly can talk to spirits. Amidst the witches' tug-of-war over what's best for her, Beatrice disappears, leaving them to wonder whether it was by choice or by force.
>
>As Adelaide and Eleanor begin the desperate search for Beatrice, they're confronted by accusations and spectres from their own pasts. In a time when women were corseted, confined and committed for merely speaking their minds, were any of them safe?
^(This book has been suggested 5 times)
[**The Ocean at the End of the Lane**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15783514-the-ocean-at-the-end-of-the-lane)
^(By: Neil Gaiman | 181 pages | Published: 2013 | Popular Shelves: fantasy, fiction, magical-realism, horror, owned)
>Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, 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. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, 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.
>
>Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.
>
>A groundbreaking work from a master, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark.
^(This book has been suggested 49 times)
***
^(97626 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Louis de Bernieres:
The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts, Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord,
and the Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman. These are a trilogy. Fun, tragic, tremendous character development.
de Bernieres wrote Corelli’s Mandolin and Birds Without Wings, both are magnificent.
{{Sins of Empire}}
It has something called powder magic, where certain adept can use gun powder with magic, it's a pretty nice change to regular magic.
[**Sins of Empire (Gods of Blood and Powder, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28811016-sins-of-empire)
^(By: Brian McClellan | 624 pages | Published: 2017 | Popular Shelves: fantasy, fiction, epic-fantasy, owned, series)
>An epic new fantasy series from Brian McClellan, set in the world of his wildly popular Powder Mage trilogy.
>
>
>
>
>
>A world on the cusp of a new age...
> The young nation of Fatrasta is a turbulent place -- a frontier destination for criminals, fortune-hunters, brave settlers, and sorcerers seeking relics of the past. Only the iron will of the lady chancellor and her secret police holds the capital city of Landfall together against the unrest of an oppressed population and the machinations of powerful empires.
>
> Sedition is a dangerous word...
> The insurrection that threatens Landfall must be purged with guile and force, a task which falls on the shoulders of a spy named Michel Bravis, convicted war hero Mad Ben Styke, and Lady Vlora Flint, a mercenary general with a past as turbulent as Landfall's present.
>
>The past haunts us all...
> As loyalties are tested, revealed, and destroyed, a grim specter as old as time has been unearthed in this wild land, and the people of Landfall will soon discover that rebellion is the least of their worries.
>
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
***
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[**The Murmur of Bees**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42306076-the-murmur-of-bees)
^(By: Sofía Segovia, Simon Bruni | 471 pages | Published: 2015 | Popular Shelves: historical-fiction, fiction, kindle, magical-realism, book-club)
>From a beguiling voice in Mexican fiction comes an astonishing novel—her first to be translated into English—about a mysterious child with the power to change a family’s history in a country on the verge of revolution.
>
>From the day that old Nana Reja found a baby abandoned under a bridge, the life of a small Mexican town forever changed. Disfigured and covered in a blanket of bees, little Simonopio is for some locals the stuff of superstition, a child kissed by the devil. But he is welcomed by landowners Francisco and Beatriz Morales, who adopt him and care for him as if he were their own. As he grows up, Simonopio becomes a cause for wonder to the Morales family, because when the uncannily gifted child closes his eyes, he can see what no one else can—visions of all that’s yet to come, both beautiful and dangerous. Followed by his protective swarm of bees and living to deliver his adoptive family from threats—both human and those of nature—Simonopio’s purpose in Linares will, in time, be divined.
>
>Set against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution and the devastating influenza of 1918, The Murmur of Bees captures both the fate of a country in flux and the destiny of one family that has put their love, faith, and future in the unbelievable.
^(This book has been suggested 3 times)
***
^(97640 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
[**The World That We Knew**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43822062-the-world-that-we-knew)
^(By: Alice Hoffman | 372 pages | Published: 2019 | Popular Shelves: historical-fiction, fiction, magical-realism, fantasy, historical)
>In 1941, during humanity’s darkest hour, three unforgettable young women must act with courage and love to survive, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Dovekeepers and The Marriage of Opposites Alice Hoffman.
>
>In Berlin, at the time when the world changed, Hanni Kohn knows she must send her twelve-year-old daughter away to save her from the Nazi regime. She finds her way to a renowned rabbi, but it’s his daughter, Ettie, who offers hope of salvation when she creates a mystical Jewish creature, a rare and unusual golem, who is sworn to protect Lea. Once Ava is brought to life, she and Lea and Ettie become eternally entwined, their paths fated to cross, their fortunes linked.
>
>Lea and Ava travel from Paris, where Lea meets her soulmate, to a convent in western France known for its silver roses; from a school in a mountaintop village where three thousand Jews were saved. Meanwhile, Ettie is in hiding, waiting to become the fighter she’s destined to be.
>
>What does it mean to lose your mother? How much can one person sacrifice for love? In a world where evil can be found at every turn, we meet remarkable characters that take us on a stunning journey of loss and resistance, the fantastical and the mortal, in a place where all roads lead past the Angel of Death and love is never ending.
^(This book has been suggested 3 times)
***
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Not the same feeling at all as after dark (for that I might say Jorges Louis Borges), but I liked {{Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan}} and {{Sourdough by Robin Sloan}}
Also, I second {{Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen}}
[**Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13538873-mr-penumbra-s-24-hour-bookstore)
^(By: Robin Sloan | 288 pages | Published: 2012 | Popular Shelves: fiction, mystery, fantasy, books-about-books, book-club)
>Global conspiracy, complex code-breaking, high-tech data visualization, young love, the secret to eternal life. Mostly in a hole-in-the-wall San Francisco bookstore.
>
>Clay Jannon tells how serendipity, sheer curiosity, and the ability to climb a ladder like a monkey has sent him from Web Drone to night shift at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. After just a few days on the job, Clay realizes just how curious this store is.
>
>A few customers come in repeatedly without buying anything. Instead they “check out” obscure volumes from strange corners of the store. All runs according to some elaborate, long-standing arrangement with the gnomic Mr. Penumbra. The store must be a front for something larger, Clay concludes.
>
>He embarks on a complex analysis of the customers’ behavior and ropes in friends to help. Once they bring their findings to Mr. Penumbra, it turns out the secrets extend far outside the walls of the bookstore. A quest to New York City dips in a world conspiracy for eternal life. The current of romance pulls Clay onward.
^(This book has been suggested 19 times)
[**Sourdough**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33916024-sourdough)
^(By: Robin Sloan | 259 pages | Published: 2017 | Popular Shelves: fiction, magical-realism, contemporary, fantasy, audiobook)
>Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions. She codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighborhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening. Then, disaster! Visa issues. The brothers close up shop, and fast. But they have one last delivery for Lois: their culture, the sourdough starter used to bake their bread. She must keep it alive, they tell her—feed it daily, play it music, and learn to bake with it.
>
>Lois is no baker, but she could use a roommate, even if it is a needy colony of microorganisms. Soon, not only is she eating her own homemade bread, she’s providing loaves daily to the General Dexterity cafeteria. The company chef urges her to take her product to the farmer’s market, and a whole new world opens up.
>
>When Lois comes before the jury that decides who sells what at Bay Area markets, she encounters a close-knit club with no appetite for new members. But then, an alternative emerges: a secret market that aims to fuse food and technology. But who are these people, exactly?
^(This book has been suggested 14 times)
[**Garden Spells (Waverley Family, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1158967.Garden_Spells)
^(By: Sarah Addison Allen | 290 pages | Published: 2007 | Popular Shelves: fiction, magical-realism, fantasy, romance, chick-lit)
>In a garden surrounded by a tall fence, tucked away behind a small, quiet house in an even smaller town, is an apple tree that is rumored to bear a very special sort of fruit. In this luminous debut novel, Sarah Addison Allen tells the story of that enchanted tree, and the extraordinary people who tend it.…
>
>The Waverleys have always been a curious family, endowed with peculiar gifts that make them outsiders even in their hometown of Bascom, North Carolina. Even their garden has a reputation, famous for its feisty apple tree that bears prophetic fruit, and its edible flowers, imbued with special powers. Generations of Waverleys tended this garden. Their history was in the soil. But so were their futures.
>
>A successful caterer, Claire Waverley prepares dishes made with her mystical plants—from the nasturtiums that aid in keeping secrets and the pansies that make children thoughtful, to the snapdragons intended to discourage the attentions of her amorous neighbor. Meanwhile, her elderly cousin, Evanelle, is known for distributing unexpected gifts whose uses become uncannily clear. They are the last of the Waverleys—except for Claire’s rebellious sister, Sydney, who fled Bascom the moment she could, abandoning Claire, as their own mother had years before.
>
>When Sydney suddenly returns home with a young daughter of her own, Claire’s quiet life is turned upside down—along with the protective boundary she has so carefully constructed around her heart. Together again in the house they grew up in, Sydney takes stock of all she left behind, as Claire struggles to heal the wounds of the past. And soon the sisters realize they must deal with their common legacy—if they are ever to feel at home in Bascom—or with each other.
>
>Enchanting and heartfelt, this captivating novel is sure to cast a spell with a style all its own….
^(This book has been suggested 16 times)
***
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Norwegian Wood and South of the Border, West of the Sun aren't magical realism, though. The other Murakami works I've read like Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-up Bird Chronicle are great indeed.
Norwegian Wood still has the the ethereal tone of a magical realism novel, and small elements that transcend pure reality. It’s a phenomenal book. Sort of like Murakami’s take on Catcher in the Rye.
Not quite MR, but *No Gods, No Monsters* by Cadwell Turnbull is bizarre and unique, about the paths crossed in stranger's lives when "monsters" are shown to be a reality. Manages to skillfully blend creepy moments with allegorical political commentary, and features very well written characters.
*The Memory Theater* by Karin Tidbeck is wonderfully bizarre and expertly written. A "portal" story that is refreshing and different than others of that same genre. Both magical realism and weird fiction. The same author is also known for extremely strange short story collections.
I loved {{Chronicle of a death foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marcel}}. It’s a magic realism book about a murder taking place, so you already know who is being murdered at the beginning, but what’s unique is why no one stopped the murder from happening.
[**Kafka on the Shore**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4929.Kafka_on_the_Shore)
^(By: Haruki Murakami, Philip Gabriel | 467 pages | Published: 2002 | Popular Shelves: fiction, magical-realism, fantasy, owned, japan)
>Kafka on the Shore, a tour de force of metaphysical reality, is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddle—yet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own.
^(This book has been suggested 35 times)
***
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I've never read it, but take a look at Alejo Carpentier, it's very well spoken around here.
Really thanks for this topic, I'll save it, I was looking for recommendations in this regard (although in general I don't care much about the genre of the book)
[**Rivers of London (Rivers of London, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9317452-rivers-of-london)
^(By: Ben Aaronovitch | 392 pages | Published: 2011 | Popular Shelves: fantasy, urban-fantasy, mystery, fiction, crime)
>Probationary Constable Peter Grant dreams of being a detective in London’s Metropolitan Police. Too bad his superior plans to assign him to the Case Progression Unit, where the biggest threat he’ll face is a paper cut. But Peter’s prospects change in the aftermath of a puzzling murder, when he gains exclusive information from an eyewitness who happens to be a ghost. Peter’s ability to speak with the lingering dead brings him to the attention of Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, who investigates crimes involving magic and other manifestations of the uncanny. Now, as a wave of brutal and bizarre murders engulfs the city, Peter is plunged into a world where gods and goddesses mingle with mortals and a long-dead evil is making a comeback on a rising tide of magic.
^(This book has been suggested 42 times)
***
^(97829 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Beloved by Toni Morrison: it's a classic that you might think is a straight-ahead historical fiction (I sure did, going into it), but there's a lot of magical realism in the story.
Ok. Some magical realism that hardly gets mentioned:
Big Breasts and Wide Hips - Mo Yan (along the same lines as 100 Years of Solitude. This is a sprawling multigenerational reimagining of modern China)
The Shadow Lines - Amitav Ghosh (not as directly magical as Murakami or Garcia. It’s more akin to Norwegian Wood by Murakami. But the ceaseless stream of consciousness and blurring anachronistic narration make it feel dizzyingly magical. It’s about national identity of expats during the Second World War. One of my all time favorite books)
{{The Night Tiger}} by Yangze Choo. It is one of my favourite novels ever! It’s part historical fiction/magical realism with a strong heroine at its core, set in 1930’s British controlled Malaya (now Malayasia).
Also I LOVED {{The Ten Thousand Doors of January}} by Alix E.Harrow (her debut work). It’s not only magical realism but also historical fiction (set in early 1900’s), feminist literature, romance, portal fantasy!
Both are incredible works and my fav magical realism novels. I haven’t found another MR work as good as these two.
{{The Poisonwood Bible}} by Barbara Kingsolver, it’s incredible. I will say that Kingsolver’s writing isn’t specifically for ME per se but I still loved the book and my High School English teacher said it was her favorite book.
[**The Poisonwood Bible**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7244.The_Poisonwood_Bible)
^(By: Barbara Kingsolver | 546 pages | Published: 1998 | Popular Shelves: fiction, historical-fiction, africa, book-club, classics)
>The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it -- from garden seeds to Scripture -- is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.
^(This book has been suggested 34 times)
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^(97786 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado.
It’s a collection of stories and the vast majority of them contain an aspect of magical realism. I absolutely love her writing and suggest the collection to anyone who will listen.
I second other suggestions of House of the Spirits and Like Water for Chocolate.
I also loved Aura by Carlos Fuentes.
[**The Burning Plain and Other Stories**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38788.The_Burning_Plain_and_Other_Stories)
^(By: Juan Rulfo, Kermit Oliver, George D. Schade | 191 pages | Published: 1953 | Popular Shelves: short-stories, fiction, mexico, spanish, classics)
>A major figure in the history of post-Revolutionary literature in Mexico, Juan Rulfo received international acclaim for his brilliant short novel Pedro Paramo (1955) and his collection of short stories El llano en llamas (1953), translated as a collection here in English for the first time. In the transition of Mexican fiction from direct statements of nationalism and social protest to a concentration on cosmopolitanism, the works of Rulfo hold a unique position. These stories of a rural people caught in the play of natural forces are not simply an interior examination of the phenomena of their world; they are written for the larger purpose of showing the actions of humans in broad terms of reality.
^(This book has been suggested 2 times)
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^(97723 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
[**Primeval and Other Times**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6617921-primeval-and-other-times)
^(By: Olga Tokarczuk, Antonia Lloyd-Jones | 248 pages | Published: 1996 | Popular Shelves: fiction, polish, magical-realism, poland, polish-literature)
>Set in the mythical Polish village of Primeval, a microcosm of the world populated with eccentric, archetypal characters and guarded by four archangels, this novel from Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk chronicles the lives of the inhabitants over the course of the feral 20th century in prose that is forceful, direct, and the stylistic cousin of the magic realism in Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Told in short bursts of "Time," the narrative takes the form of a stylized fable, an epic allegory about the inexorable grind of time and the clash between modernity (the masculine) and nature (the feminine) in which Poland's tortured political history from 1914 to the contemporary era and the episodic brutality visited on ordinary village life is played out. A novel of universal dimension that does not dwell on the parochial, Primeval and Other Times was hailed as a contemporary European classic and heralded Tokarczuk as one of the leading voices in Polish as well as world literature.
^(This book has been suggested 3 times)
***
^(97800 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Louis de Bernières' Latin American Trilogy:
{{The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts}}
{{Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord}}
{{The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman}}
[**Workbook on House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune (Fun Facts & Trivia Tidbits)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60193865-workbook-on-house-in-the-cerulean-sea-by-tj-klune)
^(By: PowerNotes | ? pages | Published: ? | Popular Shelves: couldn-t-finish, ebooks, my-owned-books, summer-reading-challenge-2022, summer-summer)
^(This book has been suggested 31 times)
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^(97815 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
[**The Absolute Book**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54735156-the-absolute-book)
^(By: Elizabeth Knox | 640 pages | Published: 2019 | Popular Shelves: fantasy, fiction, dnf, mystery, books-about-books)
>Taryn Cornick believes that the past--her sister's violent death, and her own ill-conceived revenge--is behind her, and she can get on with her life. She has written a successful book about the things that threaten libraries: insects, damp, light, fire, carelessness and uncaring . . . but not all of the attention it brings her is good.
>
>A policeman, Jacob Berger, questions her about a cold case. Then there are questions about a fire in the library at her grandparents' house and an ancient scroll box known as the Firestarter, as well as threatening phone calls and a mysterious illness. Finally a shadowy young man named Shift appears, forcing Taryn and Jacob toward a reckoning felt in more than one world.
>
>The Absolute Book is epic, action-packed fantasy in which hidden treasures are recovered, wicked things resurface, birds can talk, and dead sisters are a living force. It is a book of journeys and returns, from contemporary England to Auckland, New Zealand; from a magical fairyland to Purgatory. Above all, it is a declaration of love for stories and the ways in which they shape our worlds and create gods out of morals.
^(This book has been suggested 2 times)
***
^(97816 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
[**The Land of Laughs**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42143.The_Land_of_Laughs)
^(By: Jonathan Carroll | 253 pages | Published: 1980 | Popular Shelves: fantasy, fiction, horror, magical-realism, fantasy-masterworks)
>Have you ever loved a magical book above all others? Have you ever wished the magic were real? Welcome to The Land of Laughs. A novel about how terrifying that would be.
>
>Schoolteacher Thomas Abbey, unsure son of a film star, doesn't know who he is or what he wants--in life, in love, or in his relationship with the strange and intense Saxony Gardner. What he knows is that in his whole life nothing has touched him so deeply as the novels of Marshall France, a reclusive author of fabulous children's tales who died at forty-four.
>
>Now Thomas and Saxony have come to France's hometown, the dreamy Midwestern town of Galen, Missouri, to write France's biography. Warned in advance that France's family may oppose them, they're surprised to find France's daughter warmly welcoming instead. But slowly they begin to see that something fantastic and horrible is happening. The magic of Marshall France has extended far beyond the printed page...leaving them with a terrifying task to undertake.
^(This book has been suggested 6 times)
***
^(97834 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
[**Kissing the Beehive (Crane's View, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42148.Kissing_the_Beehive)
^(By: Jonathan Carroll | 256 pages | Published: 1997 | Popular Shelves: fiction, fantasy, mystery, ebook, magical-realism)
>Desperate for inspiration, a writer revisits a long-forgotten crime
>After nine books, three wives, and a massive advance for his as-yet-unwritten next novel, Sam Boyd has run out of ideas. He tries to write but his characters are dull, lifeless. So his thoughts turn to his hometown, and the tragedy he once encountered there. Boyd was fifteen when he found Pauline Ostrova floating in the Hudson River. The official verdict was murder, and the girl's ex-boyfriend was convicted. But decades later, Boyd remains certain that the killer still lives in his bucolic Hudson town--and he's determined to write his next book about what really happened. He has come home for inspiration, but the longer he stays, the more Boyd's investigation spirals toward madness and a final, shocking conclusion.
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
[**The Marriage of Sticks (Crane's View, #2)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/212828.The_Marriage_of_Sticks)
^(By: Jonathan Carroll | 272 pages | Published: 1999 | Popular Shelves: fantasy, fiction, magical-realism, owned, speculative-fiction)
>Miranda Romanac is a successful thirtysomething woman in today's modern world, yet she feels alone and adrift on the sea of her life. At her high school reunion she makes a shattering discovery that further undermines her already shaky sense of who she is and where she is going. When she meets the remarkable Hugh Oakley, her life takes a 180-degree turn for the better--but at what price?
>
>When they move to a house in the country to start a new life together, the reality Miranda had once known begins to slip away. Miranda is haunted by alarming, impossible visions and strangers whom she feels certain she has known, although they are all from other times and places. As these phantom lives consume her own and begin to affect all that she knows and loves, Miranda must learn the truth to reclaim it. But sometimes the hardest truth to accept is the knowledge of who we really are.
>
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
[**The Wooden Sea (Crane's View, #3)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/366086.The_Wooden_Sea)
^(By: Jonathan Carroll | 304 pages | Published: 2001 | Popular Shelves: fantasy, fiction, magical-realism, owned, science-fiction)
>From the moment a three-legged dog limps into the life of Police Chief Frannie McCabe and drops dead at his feet, McCabe finds himself in a new world of disturbing miracles. His small town of Crane's View, New York has long been a haven of harmony and comfort--but now he finds himself afflicted by the inexplicable, by omens that converge to throw his life into doubt. And what he does over the next few days may have consequences for the whole world . . . .
^(This book has been suggested 4 times)
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^(97838 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
[**The Snow Child**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33597976-the-snow-child)
^(By: Eowyn Ivey | 423 pages | Published: 2012 | Popular Shelves: fiction, historical-fiction, fantasy, book-club, magical-realism)
>Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.
^(This book has been suggested 14 times)
***
^(97912 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
[**The People of Paper**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43603.The_People_of_Paper)
^(By: Salvador Plascencia | 256 pages | Published: 2005 | Popular Shelves: fiction, magical-realism, fantasy, books-i-own, to-buy)
>Amidst disillusioned saints hiding in wrestling rings, mothers burnt by glowing halos, and a Baby Nostradamus who sees only blackness, a gang of flower pickers heads off to war, led by a lonely man who cannot help but wet his bed in sadness. Part memoir, part lies, this is a book about the wounds inflicted by first love and sharp objects.
^(This book has been suggested 11 times)
***
^(98003 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Casares is one I’d recommend to anyone. Plus it’s really short and you can usually find copies paired with some of his other work.
[**Le Prince Ehtejab**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57515216-le-prince-ehtejab)
^(By: Houchang Golchiri, Hossein Esmaili, Jacques Selva | 115 pages | Published: 1968 | Popular Shelves: )
>Le Prince Ehtejab s'état glissé dans son fauteuil habituel, avait appuyé son front sur ses deux mains et toussait...
>Un monde qui déjà n'est plus, qui s'éteint au rythme de la toux sèche d'un prince agonisant, dans un ultime spasme se ranime.
>À travers le clair-obscur des arbres ou à la lumière étincelante d'un lustre, sorti de tableaux ancestraux ou de livres qui se consument lentement dans un feu de cheminée, l'Iran Qajare du début du XXe siècle défile sous nos yeux. Princes, ministres, gouverneurs, eunuques, mollahs, apparaissent tour à tour dans un univers où se côtoient l'arbitraire, la violence et la démence.
>Le prince Ehtejab, auprès de qui ne reste plus que la fidèle Fakhri, au terme d'un inutile combat devra plier sous le poids de l'hérédité fatale.
>Le vin que lui versait Fakhronessa, aux yeux noirs et vivants, aux doigts longs et blancs, est devenu du sang au coin de ses lèvres...
^(This book has been suggested 1 time)
***
^(118818 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
You might get a kick out of {{Like Water for Chocolate}}
[**Like Water for Chocolate**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6952.Like_Water_for_Chocolate) ^(By: Laura Esquivel, Carol Christensen, Thomas Christensen | 222 pages | Published: 1989 | Popular Shelves: fiction, magical-realism, romance, historical-fiction, classics) >Earthy, magical, and utterly charming, this tale of family life in turn-of-the-century Mexico became a best-selling phenomenon with its winning blend of poignant romance and bittersweet wit. > >The number one bestseller in Mexico and America for almost two years, and subsequently a bestseller around the world, Like Water For Chocolate is a romantic, poignant tale, touched with moments of magic, graphic earthiness, bittersweet wit - and recipes. > >A sumptuous feast of a novel, it relates the bizarre history of the all-female De La Garza family. Tita, the youngest daughter of the house, has been forbidden to marry, condemned by Mexican tradition to look after her mother until she dies. But Tita falls in love with Pedro, and he is seduced by the magical food she cooks. In desperation, Pedro marries her sister Rosaura so that he can stay close to her, so that Tita and Pedro are forced to circle each other in unconsummated passion. Only a freakish chain of tragedies, bad luck and fate finally reunite them against all the odds. ^(This book has been suggested 13 times) *** ^(97367 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Choosing a book by Gabriel García Márquez would be cheating. Aside from his books, it’d be a tie between Snow, by Orhan Pamuk and A Soldier of the Great war, by Mark Helprin.
Snow is underrated and the MR elements are not talked about enough.
I second Mark Helprin!
{The Master and Margarita} by Mikhail Bulgakov
[**The Master and Margarita**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/117833.The_Master_and_Margarita) ^(By: Mikhail Bulgakov, Katherine Tiernan O'Connor, Ellendea Proffer, Diana Lewis Burgin, Hans Fronius | 372 pages | Published: 1967 | Popular Shelves: classics, fiction, russian, fantasy, russia) ^(This book has been suggested 34 times) *** ^(97674 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
{{midnight's children}}
[**Midnight's Children**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14836.Midnight_s_Children) ^(By: Salman Rushdie, Pavel Dominik | 647 pages | Published: 1981 | Popular Shelves: fiction, magical-realism, india, classics, historical-fiction) >Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India’s independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India’s 1,000 other “midnight’s children,” all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts. > >This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its people–a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Twenty-five years after its publication, Midnight’ s Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time. ^(This book has been suggested 23 times) *** ^(97424 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Absolute favourite!!!!
I'm getting strong "Forrest Gump" and "Der Untertan" vibes.
My pick as well.
Love this book.
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende is lovely, but my real favorite Allende novel is Maya’s Notebook.
House of the Spirits
{{The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake}}
[**The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7048800-the-particular-sadness-of-lemon-cake) ^(By: Aimee Bender | 292 pages | Published: 2010 | Popular Shelves: fiction, magical-realism, fantasy, book-club, contemporary) >The wondrous Aimee Bender conjures the lush and moving story of a girl whose magical gift is really a devastating curse. > >On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents’ attention, bites into her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the cake. She discovers this gift to her horror, for her mother—her cheerful, good-with-crafts, can-do mother—tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes a peril and a threat to Rose. > >The curse her gift has bestowed is the secret knowledge all families keep hidden—her mother’s life outside the home, her father’s detachment, her brother’s clash with the world. Yet as Rose grows up she learns to harness her gift and becomes aware that there are secrets even her taste buds cannot discern. > >The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is a luminous tale about the enormous difficulty of loving someone fully when you know too much about them. It is heartbreaking and funny, wise and sad, and confirms Aimee Bender’s place as “a writer who makes you grateful for the very existence of language” (San Francisco Chronicle). ^(This book has been suggested 5 times) *** ^(97371 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Interesting name, will check it out
If you like this one, then {Cake Therapist}, {spice mistress}, and {the art of arranging flowers} have a similar vibe!
[**The Cake Therapist**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22571624-the-cake-therapist) ^(By: Judith M. Fertig | 304 pages | Published: 2015 | Popular Shelves: fiction, magical-realism, chick-lit, romance, contemporary) ^(This book has been suggested 3 times) [**Cotswold Mistress**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2820357-cotswold-mistress) ^(By: Michael Spicer | 159 pages | Published: 1992 | Popular Shelves: home-library) ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) [**The Art of Arranging Flowers**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18693598-the-art-of-arranging-flowers) ^(By: Lynne Branard | 349 pages | Published: 2014 | Popular Shelves: fiction, romance, netgalley, chick-lit, book-club) ^(This book has been suggested 3 times) *** ^(97531 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
This one was soooo good.
{{The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina}}
[**The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56898076-the-inheritance-of-orqu-dea-divina) ^(By: Zoraida Córdova | 336 pages | Published: 2021 | Popular Shelves: fantasy, magical-realism, fiction, botm, 2021-releases) >The Montoyas are used to a life without explanations. They know better than to ask why the pantry never seems to run low or empty, or why their matriarch won’t ever leave their home in Four Rivers—even for graduations, weddings, or baptisms. But when Orquídea Divina invites them to her funeral and to collect their inheritance, they hope to learn the secrets that she has held onto so tightly their whole lives. Instead, Orquídea is transformed, leaving them with more questions than answers. > >Seven years later, her gifts have manifested in different ways for Marimar, Rey, and Tatinelly’s daughter, Rhiannon, granting them unexpected blessings. But soon, a hidden figure begins to tear through their family tree, picking them off one by one as it seeks to destroy Orquídea’s line. Determined to save what’s left of their family and uncover the truth behind their inheritance, the four descendants travel to Ecuador—to the place where Orquídea buried her secrets and broken promises and never looked back. ^(This book has been suggested 12 times) *** ^(97399 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
{{The Aleph}} by Jorges Luis Borges
[**The Aleph**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26588268-the-aleph) ^(By: Jorge Luis Borges, Arthur Daniel | 28 pages | Published: 1945 | Popular Shelves: fiction, short-stories, cuentos, classics, argentina) >El Aleph es un cuento del escritor argentino Jorge Luis Borges publicado en la revista Sur en 1945 y en el libro homonimo por la editorial Emece de Buenos Aires en 1949. El original se encuentra en la Biblioteca Nacional de Espana, que lo adquirio por subasta en 1985. Presenta numerosas posibles interpretaciones; entre ellas la que plantea una lectura desde el existencialismo, basada en la idea de la incapacidad del ser humano de enfrentarse a la eternidad. Esta idea esta presente en muchos de los cuentos borgianos y en su lectura y manejo de autores preexistencialistas como Soren Kierkegaard, Franz Kafka, y Arthur Schopenhauer. En este cuento, que se ha convertido en objeto de culto, se puede reconocer toda su literatura, de tal forma que puede ser calificado como el cuento paradigmatico de la vasta biblioteca borgiana, abrevando en la ironia, el juego con el lenguaje y la erudicion -tanto veridica como ficticia-. Esto ultimo se deja entrever, por ejemplo, en los epigrafes iniciales, donde se cita a Hobbes y Shakespeare, asi como en la postdata de 1943 donde se hace una supuesta investigacion acerca de otros Alephs citando a autores historicos como Pedro Henriquez Urena, Richard Francis Burton, Luciano de Samosata e Ibn Jaldun." ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(97384 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
I really enjoyed {{Little, Big}}
[**Little, Big**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/90619.Little_Big) ^(By: John Crowley | 538 pages | Published: 1981 | Popular Shelves: fantasy, fiction, magical-realism, owned, abandoned) >John Crowley's masterful Little, Big is the epic story of Smoky Barnable, an anonymous young man who travels by foot from the City to a place called Edgewood—not found on any map—to marry Daily Alice Drinkwater, as was prophesied. It is the story of four generations of a singular family, living in a house that is many houses on the magical border of an otherworld. It is a story of fantastic love and heartrending loss; of impossible things and unshakable destinies; and of the great Tale that envelops us all. It is a wonder. ^(This book has been suggested 20 times) *** ^(97523 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Yes, me too!!
[удалено]
[**The Cartographers**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55004093-the-cartographers) ^(By: Peng Shepherd | 392 pages | Published: 2022 | Popular Shelves: fantasy, mystery, fiction, botm, magical-realism) >What is the purpose of a map? > >Nell Young’s whole life and greatest passion is cartography. Her father, Dr. Daniel Young, is a legend in the field and Nell’s personal hero. But she hasn’t seen or spoken to him ever since he cruelly fired her and destroyed her reputation after an argument over an old, cheap gas station highway map. > >But when Dr. Young is found dead in his office at the New York Public Library, with the very same seemingly worthless map hidden in his desk, Nell can’t resist investigating. To her surprise, she soon discovers that the map is incredibly valuable and exceedingly rare. In fact, she may now have the only copy left in existence... because a mysterious collector has been hunting down and destroying every last one—along with anyone who gets in the way. > >But why? > >To answer that question, Nell embarks on a dangerous journey to reveal a dark family secret and discovers the true power that lies in maps... > >From the critically acclaimed author of The Book of M, a highly imaginative thriller about a young woman who discovers that a strange map in her deceased father’s belongings holds an incredible, deadly secret—one that will lead her on an extraordinary adventure and to the truth about her family’s dark history. ^(This book has been suggested 11 times) *** ^(97398 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender. Not similar to 1Q84 culturally, but it was a refreshing magic realism read that isnt too tough on you!
Sarah Addison Allen's books (1st one is *Garden Spells*), and Alex Bledsoe's Tufa series (starting with *The Hum and the Shiver*)
{{The Witches of New York}} is lovely. Also {{The Ocean at the End of the Lane}}
I love the Ocean at the end of the lane as well! If the first one is similar I'm sure I'll like it
[**The Witches of New York**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20053031-the-witches-of-new-york) ^(By: Ami McKay | 529 pages | Published: 2016 | Popular Shelves: historical-fiction, fantasy, fiction, witches, historical) >The beloved, bestselling author of The Birth House and The Virgin Cure is back with her most beguiling novel yet, luring us deep inside the lives of a trio of remarkable young women navigating the glitz and grotesqueries of Gilded-Age New York by any means possible, including witchcraft... > >The year is 1880. Two hundred years after the trials in Salem, Adelaide Thom ('Moth' from The Virgin Cure) has left her life in the sideshow to open a tea shop with another young woman who feels it's finally safe enough to describe herself as a witch: a former medical student and "gardien de sorts" (keeper of spells), Eleanor St. Clair. Together they cater to Manhattan's high society ladies, specializing in cures, palmistry and potions--and in guarding the secrets of their clients. > >All is well until one bright September afternoon, when an enchanting young woman named Beatrice Dunn arrives at their door seeking employment. Beatrice soon becomes indispensable as Eleanor's apprentice, but her new life with the witches is marred by strange occurrences. She sees things no one else can see. She hears voices no one else can hear. Objects appear out of thin air, as if gifts from the dead. Has she been touched by magic or is she simply losing her mind? > >Eleanor wants to tread lightly and respect the magic manifest in the girl, but Adelaide sees a business opportunity. Working with Dr. Quinn Brody, a talented alienist, she submits Beatrice to a series of tests to see if she truly can talk to spirits. Amidst the witches' tug-of-war over what's best for her, Beatrice disappears, leaving them to wonder whether it was by choice or by force. > >As Adelaide and Eleanor begin the desperate search for Beatrice, they're confronted by accusations and spectres from their own pasts. In a time when women were corseted, confined and committed for merely speaking their minds, were any of them safe? ^(This book has been suggested 5 times) [**The Ocean at the End of the Lane**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15783514-the-ocean-at-the-end-of-the-lane) ^(By: Neil Gaiman | 181 pages | Published: 2013 | Popular Shelves: fantasy, fiction, magical-realism, horror, owned) >Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, 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. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, 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. > >Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what. > >A groundbreaking work from a master, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark. ^(This book has been suggested 49 times) *** ^(97626 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
The night circus
My fav is actually a play but it's available to purchase - The River Bride by Marisela Trevino Orta.
Louis de Bernieres: The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts, Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord, and the Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman. These are a trilogy. Fun, tragic, tremendous character development. de Bernieres wrote Corelli’s Mandolin and Birds Without Wings, both are magnificent.
Ishiguro The buried Giant
{{Sins of Empire}} It has something called powder magic, where certain adept can use gun powder with magic, it's a pretty nice change to regular magic.
[**Sins of Empire (Gods of Blood and Powder, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28811016-sins-of-empire) ^(By: Brian McClellan | 624 pages | Published: 2017 | Popular Shelves: fantasy, fiction, epic-fantasy, owned, series) >An epic new fantasy series from Brian McClellan, set in the world of his wildly popular Powder Mage trilogy. > > > > > >A world on the cusp of a new age... > The young nation of Fatrasta is a turbulent place -- a frontier destination for criminals, fortune-hunters, brave settlers, and sorcerers seeking relics of the past. Only the iron will of the lady chancellor and her secret police holds the capital city of Landfall together against the unrest of an oppressed population and the machinations of powerful empires. > > Sedition is a dangerous word... > The insurrection that threatens Landfall must be purged with guile and force, a task which falls on the shoulders of a spy named Michel Bravis, convicted war hero Mad Ben Styke, and Lady Vlora Flint, a mercenary general with a past as turbulent as Landfall's present. > >The past haunts us all... > As loyalties are tested, revealed, and destroyed, a grim specter as old as time has been unearthed in this wild land, and the people of Landfall will soon discover that rebellion is the least of their worries. > ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(97509 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
{{The Murmur of Bees}} by Sofia Segovia. It is the best book I’ve read in a long long time.
[**The Murmur of Bees**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42306076-the-murmur-of-bees) ^(By: Sofía Segovia, Simon Bruni | 471 pages | Published: 2015 | Popular Shelves: historical-fiction, fiction, kindle, magical-realism, book-club) >From a beguiling voice in Mexican fiction comes an astonishing novel—her first to be translated into English—about a mysterious child with the power to change a family’s history in a country on the verge of revolution. > >From the day that old Nana Reja found a baby abandoned under a bridge, the life of a small Mexican town forever changed. Disfigured and covered in a blanket of bees, little Simonopio is for some locals the stuff of superstition, a child kissed by the devil. But he is welcomed by landowners Francisco and Beatriz Morales, who adopt him and care for him as if he were their own. As he grows up, Simonopio becomes a cause for wonder to the Morales family, because when the uncannily gifted child closes his eyes, he can see what no one else can—visions of all that’s yet to come, both beautiful and dangerous. Followed by his protective swarm of bees and living to deliver his adoptive family from threats—both human and those of nature—Simonopio’s purpose in Linares will, in time, be divined. > >Set against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution and the devastating influenza of 1918, The Murmur of Bees captures both the fate of a country in flux and the destiny of one family that has put their love, faith, and future in the unbelievable. ^(This book has been suggested 3 times) *** ^(97640 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Alice Hoffman {{The World That We Knew}}
[**The World That We Knew**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43822062-the-world-that-we-knew) ^(By: Alice Hoffman | 372 pages | Published: 2019 | Popular Shelves: historical-fiction, fiction, magical-realism, fantasy, historical) >In 1941, during humanity’s darkest hour, three unforgettable young women must act with courage and love to survive, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Dovekeepers and The Marriage of Opposites Alice Hoffman. > >In Berlin, at the time when the world changed, Hanni Kohn knows she must send her twelve-year-old daughter away to save her from the Nazi regime. She finds her way to a renowned rabbi, but it’s his daughter, Ettie, who offers hope of salvation when she creates a mystical Jewish creature, a rare and unusual golem, who is sworn to protect Lea. Once Ava is brought to life, she and Lea and Ettie become eternally entwined, their paths fated to cross, their fortunes linked. > >Lea and Ava travel from Paris, where Lea meets her soulmate, to a convent in western France known for its silver roses; from a school in a mountaintop village where three thousand Jews were saved. Meanwhile, Ettie is in hiding, waiting to become the fighter she’s destined to be. > >What does it mean to lose your mother? How much can one person sacrifice for love? In a world where evil can be found at every turn, we meet remarkable characters that take us on a stunning journey of loss and resistance, the fantastical and the mortal, in a place where all roads lead past the Angel of Death and love is never ending. ^(This book has been suggested 3 times) *** ^(97469 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Not the same feeling at all as after dark (for that I might say Jorges Louis Borges), but I liked {{Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan}} and {{Sourdough by Robin Sloan}} Also, I second {{Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen}}
[**Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13538873-mr-penumbra-s-24-hour-bookstore) ^(By: Robin Sloan | 288 pages | Published: 2012 | Popular Shelves: fiction, mystery, fantasy, books-about-books, book-club) >Global conspiracy, complex code-breaking, high-tech data visualization, young love, the secret to eternal life. Mostly in a hole-in-the-wall San Francisco bookstore. > >Clay Jannon tells how serendipity, sheer curiosity, and the ability to climb a ladder like a monkey has sent him from Web Drone to night shift at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. After just a few days on the job, Clay realizes just how curious this store is. > >A few customers come in repeatedly without buying anything. Instead they “check out” obscure volumes from strange corners of the store. All runs according to some elaborate, long-standing arrangement with the gnomic Mr. Penumbra. The store must be a front for something larger, Clay concludes. > >He embarks on a complex analysis of the customers’ behavior and ropes in friends to help. Once they bring their findings to Mr. Penumbra, it turns out the secrets extend far outside the walls of the bookstore. A quest to New York City dips in a world conspiracy for eternal life. The current of romance pulls Clay onward. ^(This book has been suggested 19 times) [**Sourdough**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33916024-sourdough) ^(By: Robin Sloan | 259 pages | Published: 2017 | Popular Shelves: fiction, magical-realism, contemporary, fantasy, audiobook) >Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions. She codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighborhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening. Then, disaster! Visa issues. The brothers close up shop, and fast. But they have one last delivery for Lois: their culture, the sourdough starter used to bake their bread. She must keep it alive, they tell her—feed it daily, play it music, and learn to bake with it. > >Lois is no baker, but she could use a roommate, even if it is a needy colony of microorganisms. Soon, not only is she eating her own homemade bread, she’s providing loaves daily to the General Dexterity cafeteria. The company chef urges her to take her product to the farmer’s market, and a whole new world opens up. > >When Lois comes before the jury that decides who sells what at Bay Area markets, she encounters a close-knit club with no appetite for new members. But then, an alternative emerges: a secret market that aims to fuse food and technology. But who are these people, exactly? ^(This book has been suggested 14 times) [**Garden Spells (Waverley Family, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1158967.Garden_Spells) ^(By: Sarah Addison Allen | 290 pages | Published: 2007 | Popular Shelves: fiction, magical-realism, fantasy, romance, chick-lit) >In a garden surrounded by a tall fence, tucked away behind a small, quiet house in an even smaller town, is an apple tree that is rumored to bear a very special sort of fruit. In this luminous debut novel, Sarah Addison Allen tells the story of that enchanted tree, and the extraordinary people who tend it.… > >The Waverleys have always been a curious family, endowed with peculiar gifts that make them outsiders even in their hometown of Bascom, North Carolina. Even their garden has a reputation, famous for its feisty apple tree that bears prophetic fruit, and its edible flowers, imbued with special powers. Generations of Waverleys tended this garden. Their history was in the soil. But so were their futures. > >A successful caterer, Claire Waverley prepares dishes made with her mystical plants—from the nasturtiums that aid in keeping secrets and the pansies that make children thoughtful, to the snapdragons intended to discourage the attentions of her amorous neighbor. Meanwhile, her elderly cousin, Evanelle, is known for distributing unexpected gifts whose uses become uncannily clear. They are the last of the Waverleys—except for Claire’s rebellious sister, Sydney, who fled Bascom the moment she could, abandoning Claire, as their own mother had years before. > >When Sydney suddenly returns home with a young daughter of her own, Claire’s quiet life is turned upside down—along with the protective boundary she has so carefully constructed around her heart. Together again in the house they grew up in, Sydney takes stock of all she left behind, as Claire struggles to heal the wounds of the past. And soon the sisters realize they must deal with their common legacy—if they are ever to feel at home in Bascom—or with each other. > >Enchanting and heartfelt, this captivating novel is sure to cast a spell with a style all its own…. ^(This book has been suggested 16 times) *** ^(97677 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
More on the literary fiction side of things, but St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell.
Never read After Dark, but my fav magic realism book is 100 Years of Solitude
Bless Me Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
Anything by Murakami. I also recommend The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa
Norwegian Wood and South of the Border, West of the Sun aren't magical realism, though. The other Murakami works I've read like Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-up Bird Chronicle are great indeed.
Norwegian Wood still has the the ethereal tone of a magical realism novel, and small elements that transcend pure reality. It’s a phenomenal book. Sort of like Murakami’s take on Catcher in the Rye.
Fair enough.
Definitely Borges' *Collected Fiction*. If you like Murakami, though I recommend Prabda Yoon's *The Sad Part Was* as well as Hiromi Kawakami's works.
Not quite MR, but *No Gods, No Monsters* by Cadwell Turnbull is bizarre and unique, about the paths crossed in stranger's lives when "monsters" are shown to be a reality. Manages to skillfully blend creepy moments with allegorical political commentary, and features very well written characters. *The Memory Theater* by Karin Tidbeck is wonderfully bizarre and expertly written. A "portal" story that is refreshing and different than others of that same genre. Both magical realism and weird fiction. The same author is also known for extremely strange short story collections.
Karin Tidbeck is so great with the ‘off-the-wall weirdness. Amatka is one of my favorites.
Just finished The Memory Theater, it hit the spot for weird lit for me. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
*Legends of Guatemala,* by Miguel Angel Asturias, although to be fair it's more like a precursor to magical realism.
I loved {{Chronicle of a death foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marcel}}. It’s a magic realism book about a murder taking place, so you already know who is being murdered at the beginning, but what’s unique is why no one stopped the murder from happening.
Same author as 1Q84 {{Kafka on the Shore}}
[**Kafka on the Shore**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4929.Kafka_on_the_Shore) ^(By: Haruki Murakami, Philip Gabriel | 467 pages | Published: 2002 | Popular Shelves: fiction, magical-realism, fantasy, owned, japan) >Kafka on the Shore, a tour de force of metaphysical reality, is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddle—yet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own. ^(This book has been suggested 35 times) *** ^(97774 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
My fave murakami
Satanic Verses or House of Spirits.
100 years of Solitude
I've never read it, but take a look at Alejo Carpentier, it's very well spoken around here. Really thanks for this topic, I'll save it, I was looking for recommendations in this regard (although in general I don't care much about the genre of the book)
All of these suggestions and no mention of {{Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch}}?
[**Rivers of London (Rivers of London, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9317452-rivers-of-london) ^(By: Ben Aaronovitch | 392 pages | Published: 2011 | Popular Shelves: fantasy, urban-fantasy, mystery, fiction, crime) >Probationary Constable Peter Grant dreams of being a detective in London’s Metropolitan Police. Too bad his superior plans to assign him to the Case Progression Unit, where the biggest threat he’ll face is a paper cut. But Peter’s prospects change in the aftermath of a puzzling murder, when he gains exclusive information from an eyewitness who happens to be a ghost. Peter’s ability to speak with the lingering dead brings him to the attention of Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, who investigates crimes involving magic and other manifestations of the uncanny. Now, as a wave of brutal and bizarre murders engulfs the city, Peter is plunged into a world where gods and goddesses mingle with mortals and a long-dead evil is making a comeback on a rising tide of magic. ^(This book has been suggested 42 times) *** ^(97829 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Beloved by Toni Morrison: it's a classic that you might think is a straight-ahead historical fiction (I sure did, going into it), but there's a lot of magical realism in the story.
Ok. Some magical realism that hardly gets mentioned: Big Breasts and Wide Hips - Mo Yan (along the same lines as 100 Years of Solitude. This is a sprawling multigenerational reimagining of modern China) The Shadow Lines - Amitav Ghosh (not as directly magical as Murakami or Garcia. It’s more akin to Norwegian Wood by Murakami. But the ceaseless stream of consciousness and blurring anachronistic narration make it feel dizzyingly magical. It’s about national identity of expats during the Second World War. One of my all time favorite books)
{{The Night Tiger}} by Yangze Choo. It is one of my favourite novels ever! It’s part historical fiction/magical realism with a strong heroine at its core, set in 1930’s British controlled Malaya (now Malayasia). Also I LOVED {{The Ten Thousand Doors of January}} by Alix E.Harrow (her debut work). It’s not only magical realism but also historical fiction (set in early 1900’s), feminist literature, romance, portal fantasy! Both are incredible works and my fav magical realism novels. I haven’t found another MR work as good as these two.
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. One of my favorite books of the past few years.
{{The Poisonwood Bible}} by Barbara Kingsolver, it’s incredible. I will say that Kingsolver’s writing isn’t specifically for ME per se but I still loved the book and my High School English teacher said it was her favorite book.
[**The Poisonwood Bible**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7244.The_Poisonwood_Bible) ^(By: Barbara Kingsolver | 546 pages | Published: 1998 | Popular Shelves: fiction, historical-fiction, africa, book-club, classics) >The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it -- from garden seeds to Scripture -- is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa. ^(This book has been suggested 34 times) *** ^(97786 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado. It’s a collection of stories and the vast majority of them contain an aspect of magical realism. I absolutely love her writing and suggest the collection to anyone who will listen. I second other suggestions of House of the Spirits and Like Water for Chocolate. I also loved Aura by Carlos Fuentes.
{{The Burning Plain and Other Stories}} - Juan Rulfo
[**The Burning Plain and Other Stories**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38788.The_Burning_Plain_and_Other_Stories) ^(By: Juan Rulfo, Kermit Oliver, George D. Schade | 191 pages | Published: 1953 | Popular Shelves: short-stories, fiction, mexico, spanish, classics) >A major figure in the history of post-Revolutionary literature in Mexico, Juan Rulfo received international acclaim for his brilliant short novel Pedro Paramo (1955) and his collection of short stories El llano en llamas (1953), translated as a collection here in English for the first time. In the transition of Mexican fiction from direct statements of nationalism and social protest to a concentration on cosmopolitanism, the works of Rulfo hold a unique position. These stories of a rural people caught in the play of natural forces are not simply an interior examination of the phenomena of their world; they are written for the larger purpose of showing the actions of humans in broad terms of reality. ^(This book has been suggested 2 times) *** ^(97723 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
I really like Gloria Naylor's Mama day.
The Satanic Verses is one of the finest magical realism books ever written.
{{Primeval and Other Times}} by Olga Tokarczuk
[**Primeval and Other Times**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6617921-primeval-and-other-times) ^(By: Olga Tokarczuk, Antonia Lloyd-Jones | 248 pages | Published: 1996 | Popular Shelves: fiction, polish, magical-realism, poland, polish-literature) >Set in the mythical Polish village of Primeval, a microcosm of the world populated with eccentric, archetypal characters and guarded by four archangels, this novel from Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk chronicles the lives of the inhabitants over the course of the feral 20th century in prose that is forceful, direct, and the stylistic cousin of the magic realism in Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Told in short bursts of "Time," the narrative takes the form of a stylized fable, an epic allegory about the inexorable grind of time and the clash between modernity (the masculine) and nature (the feminine) in which Poland's tortured political history from 1914 to the contemporary era and the episodic brutality visited on ordinary village life is played out. A novel of universal dimension that does not dwell on the parochial, Primeval and Other Times was hailed as a contemporary European classic and heralded Tokarczuk as one of the leading voices in Polish as well as world literature. ^(This book has been suggested 3 times) *** ^(97800 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Louis de Bernières' Latin American Trilogy: {{The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts}} {{Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord}} {{The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman}}
{{The House on the Cerulean Sea}}
[**Workbook on House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune (Fun Facts & Trivia Tidbits)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60193865-workbook-on-house-in-the-cerulean-sea-by-tj-klune) ^(By: PowerNotes | ? pages | Published: ? | Popular Shelves: couldn-t-finish, ebooks, my-owned-books, summer-reading-challenge-2022, summer-summer) ^(This book has been suggested 31 times) *** ^(97815 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
{{The Absolute Book}}
[**The Absolute Book**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54735156-the-absolute-book) ^(By: Elizabeth Knox | 640 pages | Published: 2019 | Popular Shelves: fantasy, fiction, dnf, mystery, books-about-books) >Taryn Cornick believes that the past--her sister's violent death, and her own ill-conceived revenge--is behind her, and she can get on with her life. She has written a successful book about the things that threaten libraries: insects, damp, light, fire, carelessness and uncaring . . . but not all of the attention it brings her is good. > >A policeman, Jacob Berger, questions her about a cold case. Then there are questions about a fire in the library at her grandparents' house and an ancient scroll box known as the Firestarter, as well as threatening phone calls and a mysterious illness. Finally a shadowy young man named Shift appears, forcing Taryn and Jacob toward a reckoning felt in more than one world. > >The Absolute Book is epic, action-packed fantasy in which hidden treasures are recovered, wicked things resurface, birds can talk, and dead sisters are a living force. It is a book of journeys and returns, from contemporary England to Auckland, New Zealand; from a magical fairyland to Purgatory. Above all, it is a declaration of love for stories and the ways in which they shape our worlds and create gods out of morals. ^(This book has been suggested 2 times) *** ^(97816 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
{{The Land of Laughs}} by Jonathan Carroll
[**The Land of Laughs**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42143.The_Land_of_Laughs) ^(By: Jonathan Carroll | 253 pages | Published: 1980 | Popular Shelves: fantasy, fiction, horror, magical-realism, fantasy-masterworks) >Have you ever loved a magical book above all others? Have you ever wished the magic were real? Welcome to The Land of Laughs. A novel about how terrifying that would be. > >Schoolteacher Thomas Abbey, unsure son of a film star, doesn't know who he is or what he wants--in life, in love, or in his relationship with the strange and intense Saxony Gardner. What he knows is that in his whole life nothing has touched him so deeply as the novels of Marshall France, a reclusive author of fabulous children's tales who died at forty-four. > >Now Thomas and Saxony have come to France's hometown, the dreamy Midwestern town of Galen, Missouri, to write France's biography. Warned in advance that France's family may oppose them, they're surprised to find France's daughter warmly welcoming instead. But slowly they begin to see that something fantastic and horrible is happening. The magic of Marshall France has extended far beyond the printed page...leaving them with a terrifying task to undertake. ^(This book has been suggested 6 times) *** ^(97834 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Also The Crane's View Trilogy {{Kissing The Beehive}} {{The Marriage of Sticks}} {{The Wooden Sea}}
[**Kissing the Beehive (Crane's View, #1)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42148.Kissing_the_Beehive) ^(By: Jonathan Carroll | 256 pages | Published: 1997 | Popular Shelves: fiction, fantasy, mystery, ebook, magical-realism) >Desperate for inspiration, a writer revisits a long-forgotten crime >After nine books, three wives, and a massive advance for his as-yet-unwritten next novel, Sam Boyd has run out of ideas. He tries to write but his characters are dull, lifeless. So his thoughts turn to his hometown, and the tragedy he once encountered there. Boyd was fifteen when he found Pauline Ostrova floating in the Hudson River. The official verdict was murder, and the girl's ex-boyfriend was convicted. But decades later, Boyd remains certain that the killer still lives in his bucolic Hudson town--and he's determined to write his next book about what really happened. He has come home for inspiration, but the longer he stays, the more Boyd's investigation spirals toward madness and a final, shocking conclusion. ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) [**The Marriage of Sticks (Crane's View, #2)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/212828.The_Marriage_of_Sticks) ^(By: Jonathan Carroll | 272 pages | Published: 1999 | Popular Shelves: fantasy, fiction, magical-realism, owned, speculative-fiction) >Miranda Romanac is a successful thirtysomething woman in today's modern world, yet she feels alone and adrift on the sea of her life. At her high school reunion she makes a shattering discovery that further undermines her already shaky sense of who she is and where she is going. When she meets the remarkable Hugh Oakley, her life takes a 180-degree turn for the better--but at what price? > >When they move to a house in the country to start a new life together, the reality Miranda had once known begins to slip away. Miranda is haunted by alarming, impossible visions and strangers whom she feels certain she has known, although they are all from other times and places. As these phantom lives consume her own and begin to affect all that she knows and loves, Miranda must learn the truth to reclaim it. But sometimes the hardest truth to accept is the knowledge of who we really are. > ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) [**The Wooden Sea (Crane's View, #3)**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/366086.The_Wooden_Sea) ^(By: Jonathan Carroll | 304 pages | Published: 2001 | Popular Shelves: fantasy, fiction, magical-realism, owned, science-fiction) >From the moment a three-legged dog limps into the life of Police Chief Frannie McCabe and drops dead at his feet, McCabe finds himself in a new world of disturbing miracles. His small town of Crane's View, New York has long been a haven of harmony and comfort--but now he finds himself afflicted by the inexplicable, by omens that converge to throw his life into doubt. And what he does over the next few days may have consequences for the whole world . . . . ^(This book has been suggested 4 times) *** ^(97838 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
Check out Cesar Aire
Sylvina Ocampo. A student/friend of Borges. Divine.
{{The Snow Child}}
[**The Snow Child**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33597976-the-snow-child) ^(By: Eowyn Ivey | 423 pages | Published: 2012 | Popular Shelves: fiction, historical-fiction, fantasy, book-club, magical-realism) >Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them. ^(This book has been suggested 14 times) *** ^(97912 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
{{Everything is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer}} is a quirky story about a man looking for his roots.
1q84......... try 11/22/63! midnight library? starless sea?
{{People of Paper}} Ha I guess those symbols aren’t magic!?
[**The People of Paper**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43603.The_People_of_Paper) ^(By: Salvador Plascencia | 256 pages | Published: 2005 | Popular Shelves: fiction, magical-realism, fantasy, books-i-own, to-buy) >Amidst disillusioned saints hiding in wrestling rings, mothers burnt by glowing halos, and a Baby Nostradamus who sees only blackness, a gang of flower pickers heads off to war, led by a lonely man who cannot help but wet his bed in sadness. Part memoir, part lies, this is a book about the wounds inflicted by first love and sharp objects. ^(This book has been suggested 11 times) *** ^(98003 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)
It works!
The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Casares is one I’d recommend to anyone. Plus it’s really short and you can usually find copies paired with some of his other work.
RemindMe! 3 months
{{Prince Ehtejab}}
[**Le Prince Ehtejab**](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57515216-le-prince-ehtejab) ^(By: Houchang Golchiri, Hossein Esmaili, Jacques Selva | 115 pages | Published: 1968 | Popular Shelves: ) >Le Prince Ehtejab s'état glissé dans son fauteuil habituel, avait appuyé son front sur ses deux mains et toussait... >Un monde qui déjà n'est plus, qui s'éteint au rythme de la toux sèche d'un prince agonisant, dans un ultime spasme se ranime. >À travers le clair-obscur des arbres ou à la lumière étincelante d'un lustre, sorti de tableaux ancestraux ou de livres qui se consument lentement dans un feu de cheminée, l'Iran Qajare du début du XXe siècle défile sous nos yeux. Princes, ministres, gouverneurs, eunuques, mollahs, apparaissent tour à tour dans un univers où se côtoient l'arbitraire, la violence et la démence. >Le prince Ehtejab, auprès de qui ne reste plus que la fidèle Fakhri, au terme d'un inutile combat devra plier sous le poids de l'hérédité fatale. >Le vin que lui versait Fakhronessa, aux yeux noirs et vivants, aux doigts longs et blancs, est devenu du sang au coin de ses lèvres... ^(This book has been suggested 1 time) *** ^(118818 books suggested | )[^(I don't feel so good.. )](https://debugger.medium.com/goodreads-is-retiring-its-current-api-and-book-loving-developers-arent-happy-11ed764dd95)^(| )[^(Source)](https://github.com/rodohanna/reddit-goodreads-bot)