What do movies like The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Amélie and Pan’s Labyrinth have in common with literary works like Beloved, Like Water for Chocolate, Kafka on the Shore and Midnight's Children?

You guessed it. They all fall under the magical realism category, which happens to be the topic for this episode of Majorly Useless.

One of my favourite literary modes, this episode will cover what magical realism is, a brief history of it in literature and then, of course, its application in different literary works, namely the four texts from my initial question.

Also, magical realism is NOT fantasy. So if you aren’t a fantasy fan, please don’t tune out just yet (although I do love fantasy too).

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PRIMARY TEXTS COVERED (in order)

Like Water for Chocolate - Laura Esquivel

Beloved - Toni Morrison

Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami

OTHER WORKS MENTIONED

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez

The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie

Joseph Anton - Salman Rushdie

REFERENCES

Le Mystère Laïc - Jean Cocteau

Scheherazade’s Children: Magical Realism in Postmodernist Fiction - Wendy Faris

Magical Realism and the Fantastic: Resolved versus Unresolved Antinomy -  Amaryll Beatrice Chanady

Speaking the Unspoken: Rewriting Identity Loss and Memory of Slavery through Magical Realism in Toni Morrison’s Beloved -  Md Abu Abdullah

Privileging Oddity and Otherness: A Study of Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore - Rasleena Thakur and Vani Khurana

AUDIO SAMPLES

Salman Rushdie on Magical Realism: True Stories Don't Tell the Whole Truth:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZtdhLndVYg

Narcos Season 01 Episode 03:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG852G-pDS4

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Thank you for listening to another episode of Majorly Useless: A Philosophy and Literature Podcast.