Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Chapter 19 - Magic and the Literary Market

  • from Part III - Application
  • Edited by Christopher Warnes, University of Cambridge, Kim Anderson Sasser, Wheaton College, Illinois
  • Book:
    Magical Realism and Literature
    Published online:
    22 October 2020
    Print publication:
    12 November 2020, pp 337-356

  • Summary

    This chapter examines the role of magical realism in the literary marketplace with regard to questions of aestheticism, commodification, escapism and exoticism. It draws on literary texts (Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate, Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West, Daisy Johnson’s Everything Under and Ali Shaw’s The Girl with Glass Feet) together with their paratexts (such as websites, author comments and interviews, publicity material and reviews) and argues that the appeal of magical realism as a commercial label must also be taken into account when we speak about the cultural work performed by this mode. This is not in order to evaluate and judge specific texts in comparison with others, but because readers and their predilections, and the appeal of what is often called 'fabulist narration' in the description of magical realist books, decisively influence the effect of magical realist literature.