Colombia (1928-)

García Márquez is perhaps best known for his Cien años de soledad (1967) where, according to some,  further expands on the concept of mágico realismo. Aesthetically the novel is pleasing, since it reads like a fable.  Mágico realismo (in the same line of Carpentiers' "real maravilloso" refers to the idea that in Latin America the primitive, the bizarre, the magic and the strange still exist as part of everyday life.  Of course, this is a very Eurocentric believe defended by pro-European critics from the region and others in the American academia. Mágico realism is not a everyday reality in the region, but it is, in fact, the  reflection of the Orientalist practices common to the intellectual elites in the region who share the outlook on literary praxis as their European counterparts. European logocentrism, based on old assumptions of primitivism, savagery and temporal differences between Europeans and the Other, has assigned a niche for the ontology of the Latin American subject. García cashes in this ideology which sees the Latin American subject as the embodiment of the bizarre, the primitive, the magic, the abnormal and the female. Ironically enough, García has been recognized with a Nobel Prize. His other works, like Los funerales de la Mamá Grande y La hojarasca reflects much of this ideology. Even personal relationships reflect this way of thinking as evident in García's Amor en tiempos del cólera.