OLLI Literary Club: Magic Realism in the Americas

This semester’s selections explore the subgenre of magic realism in novels and stories by North and South American authors. We begin with Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban (1993), a novel that moves between the U.S. and Cuba, tracing a family’s experience of political revolution. Next, we read Isabel Allende’s debut novel, The House of the Spirits (1982), a family saga spanning the post-colonial years of upheaval in Chile. Finally, we encounter Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez’s short story, “Eyes of a Blue Dog” (1950), and Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Library of Babel” (1941), delving into magic realism’s South American roots.