7 Magical Realism Books You Need To Read In 2025

Magical realism is a literary genre that fuses the ordinary with the extraordinary, weaving fantastical elements seamlessly into everyday life. It allows us to explore reality through a lens of wonder, imagination, and deep cultural insight. For readers seeking stories that transcend conventional boundaries, magical realism offers a world where the mystical coexists with the mundane. Below is a list of 7 magical realism books you need to read in 2025.

1. Garden of Evening Mists – Tan Twan Eng

Tan Twan Eng’s Garden of Evening Mists tells the story of Yun Ling Teoh, a survivor of a Japanese wartime internment camp in Malaya, who seeks to create a Japanese garden in honor of her late sister. The novel interweaves memory, trauma, and beauty, with magical realism subtly present in the way the garden transcends ordinary time and space. Themes of healing, art, and forgiveness are explored with lyrical prose and meticulous attention to cultural detail. This novel demonstrates how magical realism can be gentle yet profound, blending history and fantasy to illuminate personal and collective resilience.

2. Death with Interruptions – José Saramago

In Death with Interruptions, José Saramago imagines a world where people stop dying, creating social, political, and spiritual chaos. Saramago blends the fantastical with incisive commentary, using magical realism to explore mortality, human nature, and societal values. His long, flowing sentences and minimal punctuation immerse readers in a world both absurd and believable. Themes of life, love, bureaucracy, and existential inquiry are amplified by the novel’s magical premise. Death with Interruptions exemplifies how magical realism can provoke thought, challenge assumptions, and illuminate universal human experiences, making fantastical scenarios deeply meaningful and reflective of our own reality.

3. Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel

Like Water for Chocolate tells the story of Tita, a young woman whose emotions magically infuse her cooking, affecting everyone who tastes her food. Each chapter revolves around a traditional Mexican recipe, blending culinary art with supernatural consequences. Esquivel explores themes of love, family obligation, passion, and societal expectation, showing how personal expression can transcend ordinary life. The magical realism in the novel elevates everyday rituals, making the ordinary extraordinary. By merging cultural traditions with fantastical elements, Esquivel demonstrates how magical realism can create a sensory, emotional, and culturally rich reading experience, leaving a lasting impression on readers.

4. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Díaz

Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao chronicles the life of Oscar, a Dominican-American nerd, whose family is plagued by a generational curse. Magical realism blends with history, folklore, and pop culture, exploring themes of identity, diaspora, trauma, and love. The narrative’s footnotes provide historical context, while supernatural elements highlight the persistence of myth and memory. Díaz’s mix of humor, tragedy, and fantastical motifs makes the story both accessible and profound. Oscar Wao demonstrates how magical realism can modernize folklore, connect past and present, and offer insight into cultural and personal identity, resonating with readers across generations.

5. Beloved – Toni Morrison

Beloved tells the story of Sethe, a formerly enslaved woman haunted by the ghost of her daughter. Morrison blends historical reality with supernatural elements, emphasizing the lingering effects of slavery on individuals and communities. The novel examines memory, trauma, guilt, motherhood, and the struggle for identity, using magical realism to make the past viscerally present. Morrison’s lyrical, poetic prose immerses readers in a world where spirits and memories coexist with the living. Beloved demonstrates that magical realism can give voice to suppressed histories, enabling readers to confront painful truths while appreciating the resilience and humanity of its characters.

6. The Ocean at the End of the Lane – Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane explores the fragility of memory and childhood, blending everyday life with mythic, supernatural forces. The protagonist revisits his past, encountering magical events that reveal the hidden layers of reality. Themes of innocence, trauma, and the permeability between ordinary and extraordinary experiences are central, conveyed through Gaiman’s rich, evocative prose. The novel demonstrates that magical realism can uncover psychological and emotional truths, making the unseen aspects of life tangible. Gaiman’s storytelling illustrates how fantastical elements enhance narrative depth, creating a reading experience that is simultaneously enchanting, reflective, and emotionally resonant.

7. Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami

Kafka on the Shore intertwines the lives of a teenage boy, Kafka, and an elderly man, Nakata, in a surreal, dreamlike narrative. Talking cats, mysterious rains of fish, and metaphysical phenomena permeate ordinary life, blending magical realism with philosophical inquiry. Murakami explores identity, fate, consciousness, and the subconscious mind, challenging readers to question the boundaries of reality. The novel’s fragmented structure and shifting perspectives mirror the complexity of human experience, while its magical elements emphasize the connections between past, memory, and self-discovery. Kafka on the Shore exemplifies how magical realism can bridge the personal and the metaphysical, offering profound insights into human existence.

Conclusion

Magical realism offers a literary playground where reality and imagination coexist, creating profound reflections on society, culture, and human emotion.

By reading these works, we not only experience fantastical storytelling but also gain new perspectives on history, identity, and the human condition. For anyone seeking literature that transcends the ordinary, these books are essential.