Magic as Everyday

Magical realism presents supernatural events in flat, journalistic prose. It rains for four years and eleven months. A trail of blood flows uphill through the streets. A priest levitates after drinking hot chocolate. None of these events are treated as remarkable by the characters or the narrator.

Márquez learned this technique from his grandmother, who told ghost stories with complete matter-of-factness. In her world, the dead visited regularly and miracles were as ordinary as breakfast. Márquez simply moved that worldview onto the page, creating a literary mode that would transform world literature.