Best Magical Realism Books to Read

This brutally powerful, mesmerizing story is an unflinchingly look into the abyss of slavery, from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison.
https://quizlit.org/15-best-magical-realism-books#2-beloved-by-toni-morrison

One Hundred Years of Solitude is a seamless blend of fantasy and reality. Marquez’s great masterpiece is the story of seven generations of the Buendia family and of Macondo, the town they have built. Though little more than a settlement surrounded by mountains, Macondo has its wars and disasters, even its wonders and miracles.
https://quizlit.org/15-best-magical-realism-books#10-one-hundred-years-of-solitude-by-gabriel-garcia-marquez

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is the bestselling magical novel from Neil Gaiman, one of the most brilliant storytellers of our generation.
https://quizlit.org/15-best-magical-realism-books#1-the-ocean-at-the-end-of-the-lane-by-neil-gaiman

Imagine a reality where migration didn’t involve a journey, and instead, anyone could simply walk through a door and be in another country. That’s what author Mohsin Hamid does in Exit West, his 2017 novel that tells the story of two characters — Saeed and Nadia — who meet and fall in love as their country breaks out in a civil war.
https://quizlit.org/15-best-magical-realism-books#4-exit-west-by-mohsin-hamid

Encapsulating Dominican-American history, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao opens our eyes to an astonishing vision of the contemporary American experience and explores the endless human capacity to persevere—and risk it all—in the name of love.
https://quizlit.org/15-best-magical-realism-books#6-the-brief-wondrous-life-of-oscar-waonbspby-junot-diaz

In this relentlessly inventive novel, Japan most popular fiction writer hurtles into the consciousness of the West.
https://quizlit.org/15-best-magical-realism-books#7-hardboiled-wonderland-and-the-end-of-the-world-by-haruki-murakami

Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage–and lost his mother and all memory of her when he was a child–but he is also gifted with a mysterious power.
https://quizlit.org/15-best-magical-realism-books#9-the-water-dancer-by-tanehisi-coates

One morning in 1945, a boy is driven by his father to a mysterious place hidden away in the heart of the old city: The Cemetery of Lost Books. There, Daniel Sempere finds a cursed book which will change the course of his life and plunge him into a labyrinth of intrigue and secrets concealed in the dark soul of the city.
https://quizlit.org/15-best-magical-realism-books#12-the-shadow-of-the-wind-by-carlos-ruiz-zafon

Cloud Atlas is a novel comprised of six interconnected tales, each written in a unique style and told from a differing perspective:
https://quizlit.org/15-best-magical-realism-books#14-cloud-atlas-by-david-mitchell

On Tuesdays and Fridays Piranesi sees his friend, the Other. Messages begin to appear, scratched out in chalk on the pavements. There is someone new in the House. But who are they and what do they want? Are they a friend or do they bring destruction and madness as the Other claims?
https://quizlit.org/15-best-magical-realism-books#3-piranesi-by-susanna-clarke

One spring afternoon, the Devil, trailing fire and chaos in his wake, weaves himself out of the shadows and into Moscow.
https://quizlit.org/15-best-magical-realism-books#5-the-master-and-margarita-by-mikhail-bulgakov

Based on a Russian fairy tale, The Snow Child is a tale of the shoring up of defences, psychological and literal, against the cold and dark. Set in the 1920s, the novel follows the move of middle-aged Jack and Mabel from ‘back east’ America to a remote homestead in Alpine, Alaska.

https://quizlit.org/15-best-magical-realism-books#8-the-snow-child-by-eowyn-ivey

The astonishing debut of a gifted storyteller, The House of the Spirits is both a symbolic family saga and the story of an unnamed Latin American country’s turbulent history.
https://quizlit.org/15-best-magical-realism-books#11-the-house-of-the-spirits-by-isabel-allende

Check out our full Magical Realism Reading List

Moving back and forth in time, from London in the swinging 1960s to the brutal years of Argentina’s military dictatorship and its turbulent aftermath, Our Share of Night is a novel like no other: a family story, a ghost story, a story of the occult and the supernatural, a book about the complexities of love and longing with queer subplots and themes.
Best Books of 2023