Description

While social realism dominated the scene in South Asian prose for much of the 20th century, we have been witnessing the constant rise of a new mode of writing in the last forty years or so. Blending realism with supernatural elements, Magic Realism was mostly received as world literature from South America (Márquez, Borges, etc.). Ever since Rushdie‘s Midnight’s Children (1980), Magic Realism has become a strong presence in South Asian literatures, both English and vernacular.
The paper will sketch the recent genealogy of Magic Realism from South Asia and outline, through a number of examples from Hindi, Bengali and Urdu literatures, how strategies of this literary mode are deployed in South Asia. It will also look at how some Bengali authors and critics position this production. Has Magic Realism, as some critics argue, always been a part of South Asian literary heritage? Is it an invention and cultural property of the global South? What do such patterns of appropriation mean for our thinking about world literature?

Hans Ulrich Harder is Professor of Modern South Asian Languages and Literatures at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, Germany. His research interests are modern literatures in South Asia, particularly Bengali, religious movements, and intellectual history. He is the author of “Sufism and Saint Veneration in Bangladesh” (Routledge 2011) and other books, and has edited “Asian Punches: A Transcultural Affair” (Springer 2013).