The most recommended magical realism books

At first glance, Valley of Shadows is a straight-genre horror novel, with a gruesome whodunnit at its center.

We’re given a noble but flawed Mexican American hero, Solitario, searching for a band of ritualistic murderers, who, by the novel’s midpoint, have already slaughtered a dozen men, women, and children.

This leaves Solitario, like the reader, desperate to keep them from killing again, but clueless about who they are and how they select their victims. This mystery remains unsolved until a shocking perpetrator and motive emerge on the novel’s final pages.

An essential thread in Ruiz’s riveting story is its otherworldly cast of characters, including a parade of personable ghosts, two living bruja (Mexican witches), and both the mythology and practical applications of Aztec and Apache mystical traditions.

Readers will recognize these flourishes as directly traceable to the fantastical, politically charged magic realism style developed by masters of this genre, namely… show more.

Pete Hamill is one of my father’s favorite writers. Both share a love of history and, especially, the history of New York, which is the backdrop of this book and the history of my family.

Hamill paints such a rich world that it’s easy to fall into it and long to stay. 

Many of my family called New York home, most via Ellis Island. Reading this story, which takes New York back to its beginnings, made me feel closer to my ancestors. I’ve walked those streets with my father and been in those neighborhoods, listening to his tales of his childhood and wondering what it all looked, smelled, and sounded like in the past.

One of my favourite books of all-time, Vita Nostra, is a smartly-crafted work of dark Ukrainian fantasy that explores a young woman's awakening of consciousness through a combination of philosophy, science, and magic—which is based on language and transcends certain metaphorical language structures. It is absurd and strange, but the story's originality and punchy prose made it profoundly impactful to me.

The sequel is equally mysterious and captivating. While very abstract, I found the unrelatability to the Protagonist’s journey surprisingly relatable. Her sense of distance from society while walking a path that ordinary people rarely follow aligned with elements of my experience walking a path of ‘truth’ and transcending ego-centric existence. Challenging, but the reward is astronomical.

I should start by saying that Thiong'o has recently been accused, by his son, of beating his former wife, claims I take very seriously (and which has put my reading of Thiong'o’s female characters in a new light).

In this book, I found a sharp, cunning satire of despotic post-colonial governments working with and shaped by international funders and Western policymakers. Having worked in NGOs, I found Thiong'o’s characterization of “development” to be darkly funny and cringe-worthily accurate.

I loved Lyra. I'm not sure I've ever encountered a protagonist who is so prone to lying, but I can forgive her anything because of her determination to save her friend Roger. Lyra is bold, reckless, and endearing. The Golden Compass also has a memorable supporting cast. My favourites are the air balloon pilot Lee Scoresby; the armoured bear Iorek; and of course Lyra's familiar Pantalaimon. The high-stakes plot moves quickly and unpredictably. The settings are exotic and imaginative. This is a classic children's tale that gives adults much to ruminate on in terms of religion, politics, and belief systems.

Borges has the confidence and courage to write without any concessions to genre or previously understood conceptions of normality, he scares nothing off the reader and does not know where they stand with him.

I believe he is obsessed with ideas pertaining to eternity, and the illusionary nature of space and time, which stand behind his otherwise bizarre and sometimes confusing plots, that often, superficially, resemble detective stories or fragmentary memoirs. Wring that is in service to ideas is often poorer for it, but Borges dramatises philosophy in a way that is as readable as it is original.

This novel is wildly weird and wonderful, perfectly logical, and positive as well as painful.

I know Lund. She means a bird-in-the-chest literally, rather than a metaphor for gender transition. The main character, Owen Tanner, is hidden by his mother to keep him safe from dystopian powers-that-be. As a young teen, Owen knows: it’s live fully or die. He sets out to live.

When Owen runs away, his physical journey becomes emotional. My favorite kind of book!! Cis-gender, trans, queer, non-binary, inter-sex; sexuality and gender are not (only) what is going to make you love this novel. The Boy with a Bird in His Chest is for everyone who wants to feel, learn, weep, giggle, maybe pray, and luxuriate in a most festive imagination. 

Carmen has created a more “ordinary world” in which extraordinary people exist in the shadows. There is romance and danger and suspense, but I like that there’s no graphic violence here. Each book in this series focuses on a different couple.

Like a lot of people, I read The Great Gatsby in high school. I really loved it, which is why I was thrilled when one of my favorite authors did her own fantasy re-imaging of this classic.

The Chosen and the Beautiful is set in an alternate universe where magic flows as easily as champagne. It centers on Jordan Baker, a side character in the original book, and reimagines her as a Vietnamese orphan who was adopted as a baby into a wealthy white family.

I loved how this book managed to take a classic and cast it in a totally new light: it makes you think about who and what gets left out of the history books.   

I’ve read the first sentence of The Angel’s Game over and over, never tiring of the simple wisdom—and truth—of protagonist David Martin’s words: “A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or a word of praise in exchange for a story…” And for the rest of the novel, I’m caught in the web of an author whose prose is as pleasurable to read as the story itself. The Angel’s Game is an example of visionary/metaphysical fiction, a little-known genre under the umbrella of speculative fiction containing paranormal and/or supernatural elements that don’t exist in the real world. Carlos Ruiz Zafon, however, makes the unreal seem real and the impossible seem possible, a sign of a truly gifted writer.