Mexico flag Magical realism books from Mexico

Recommended magical realism books (7)
Travel the world without leaving your chair. If you are into magical realism here are some magical realism books from Mexico for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge.

1.

Como agua para chocolate / Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel ES

Rating: 4 (3 votes)
Description:
Mexico zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts. Als jüngste von drei Töchtern darf Tita nicht heiraten, sondern muss bis zu deren Tod ihre Mutter versorgen. Pedro, ihre grosse Liebe, heiratet die ältere Schwester, um wenigstens in ihrer Nähe zu bleiben. Ihren Gefühlen kann sie allein in der Küche Ausdruck geben: die Gäste erleben beim Essen nach, was Tita beim Kochen empfunden hat - mit zum Teil grotesken Folgen.

2.

Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel EN

Rating: 3 (14 votes)
Description:
The Number One Bestseller In Mexico And America For Almost Two Years, And Subsequently A Bestseller Around The World, Like Water For Chocolate Is A Romantic, Poignant Tale, Touched With Moments Of Magic, Graphic Earthiness, Bittersweet Wit - And Recipes.A Sumptuous Feast Of A Novel, It Relates The Bizarre History Of The All-Female De La Garza Family. Tita, The Youngest Daughter Of The House, Has Been Forbidden To Marry, Condemned By Mexican Tradition To Look After Her Mother Until She Dies. But Tita Falls In Love With Pedro, And He Is Seduced By The Magical Food She Cooks. In Desperation Pedro... continue

3.

Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo EN

Rating: 4 (19 votes)
Description:
Deserted villages of rural Mexico, where images and memories of the past linger like unquiet ghosts, haunted the imaginations of the author. In one such village of the mind, Comala, he set his classic novel Pedro Páramo, a dream-like tale that intertwines a man's quest to find his lost father and reclaim his patrimony with the father's obsessive love for a woman who will not be possessed, Susana San Juan.

4.

Recollections of Things to Come by Elena Garro EN

Rating: 3 (1 vote)
Description:
This remarkable first novel depicts life in the small Mexican town of Ixtepec during the grim days of the Revolution. The town tells its own story against a variegated background of political change, religious persecution, and social unrest. Elena Garro, who has also won a high reputation as a playwright, is a masterly storyteller. Although her plot is dramatically intense and suspenseful, the novel does not depend for its effectiveness on narrative continuity. It is a book of episodes, one that leaves the reader with a series of vivid impressions. The colors are bright, the smells pungent, th... continue

5.

Swift as Desire by Laura Esquivel EN

Rating: 4 (1 vote)
Description:
As the millions of fans of Like Water for Chocolate know, Laura Esquivel is a romanticist whose novels explore the power of love and the truths of the human heart. She returns to those themes in Swift as Desire, the story of a loving and passionate man who has the gift of bringing happiness to everyone except his own wife. The hero of this novel is Júbilo Chi, a telegraph operator who is born with the ability to “hear” people’s true feelings and respond to their most intimate, unspoken desires. His life changes forever the day he falls deeply and irrevocably in love with Lucha, the beautiful d... continue

6.

The Law of Love by Laura Esquivel EN

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Description:
A cosmic love story, A Mexican Midsummer Night's Dream that stretches from the fall of Montezuma's Mexico to the 23rd century. By including the music that so perfectly accompanies the story, it weaves an enchanting spell that will absorb readers in ways no novel ever has before.

7.

You Dreamed of Empires : A Novel by Álvaro Enrigue EN

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Description:
“Short, strange, spiky and sublime… [Enrigue] is clearly a major talent.” – Dwight Garner, The New York Times From the visionary author of Sudden Death, a hallucinatory, revelatory, colonial revenge story. One morning in 1519, conquistador Hernán Cortés entered the city of Tenochtitlan – today's Mexico City. Later that day, he would meet the emperor Moctezuma in a collision of two worlds, two empires, two languages, two possible futures. Cortés was accompanied by his nine captains, his troops, and his two translators: Friar Aguilar, a taciturn, former slave, and Malinalli, a strategic, former ... continue