11 Short Stories That Will Give You A Crash Course In Magical Realism

Márquez is a renowned master of magical realism, and "The Autumn of the Patriarch" is one of his most ambitious works of fiction. The short story (excerpted from the novel of the same name) follows a dying tyrant trapped within the prison of his own dictatorship. Walking the fine line between horrific tragedy and absurd comedy, Márquez described his own tale as a "poem on the solitude of power."

"Americca" begins with the appearance of an extra tube of toothpaste. Seems innocuous enough. But soon strange "gifts," doubles of ordinary household objects, start appearing all over the place, leaving one family to start questioning who (or what) is playing this bizarre game.

If creepy, distressing magical realism is your jam, then chances are good you've already read Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, in which a man named Gregor Samsa wakes up to find himself transformed into a giant cockroach. In Haruki Murakami's "Samsa in Love," someone wakes up one morning to find that he has, in fact, transformed into Gregor Samsa.

Anyone who frequented thrift shops a lot as a kid probably knows the feeling of picked up a secondhand object and just knowing that it's cursed. Or blessed. Or filled with fairies. That is essentially the premise of "The Faery Handbag," an odd short story by the clever, ever magical Kelly Link.

Larry Rubio and his friends (Mondo, Gus, and Juan Carlos), find a scarecrow lashed to a tree in Friendship Park, New Jersey. This is odd, as there is no corn field nearby, and no crops to protect. But Karen Russell's "The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis" quickly goes from odd to terrifying as she explores the darker side of childhood bullying and the creepiness of straw-stuffed dolls.

"Hello, Moto" is a horror story about wigs and phones. One woman makes wigs for herself and her two friends, hoping to make all three of them better. And, like all great magical realism stories, the elements of other-worldliness are used to make a point about politics, nationhood, female friendship, and what happens when "self-improvement" goes terribly awry.

"The Shawl" follows an Anishinaabeg mother, who has just had a baby with a man who is not her husband. She is sent to live with this other man, but tragedy strikes their wagon and a small girl is killed. All that is left of her is a tattered shawl, a heartbreaking garment that has repercussions for generations after.

In "The Seraph and the Zambesi," a six-winged angel appears to a group of European colonists in Zimbabwe on Christmas Eve. Naturally, the angry colonists threaten the angel with fire and police unless the angel agrees to leave their property immediately. First published in 1951, this is the story that launched the career of Muriel Spark, known for her weird, magical meta-fiction.

"If A Book Is Locked There’s Probably A Good Reason For That Don’t You Think" is, as the title suggests, about a locked book. Specifically, our protagonist arrives at the office for work, only to find a mysteriously locked diary. But of course, there is nothing more maddening than a tightly locked book (even if there is probably a good reason for it).

If you're extremely squeamish about body parts, "The Journey of the Eyeball" may not be the story for you. But if the idea of an independent eyeball setting off on a quest to find its lady love strikes you as sad, hilarious, and creepy (in a fun way), then you'll love this "love story" between an unsuspecting women and a rogue optic nerve.

The moon hangs decrepit and ugly over the city of New York. The people below hate looking up at something so old, so they come up with a perfect solution: build a crane to pluck the moon out of the sky, so that it might be discarded at last. "The Daughters of the Moon" is one of Italo Calvino's classic tales of lunar weirdness and the dangers of a society that can only appreciate the new.