Magical Realism in the Americas: Politicised Ghosts in One Hundred Years of Solitude, The House of the Spirits, and Beloved

A quota system is to be introduced on fiction set in South America. The intention is to curb the spread of package-tour baroque and heavy irony. Ah, the propinquity of cheap life and expensive principles, of religion and banditry, or surprising honour and random cruelty. Ah, the daiquiri bird which incubates its eggs on the wing: ah, the fredonna tree whose roots grow at the tips of its branches, and whose fibres assist the hunchback to impregnate by telepathy the haughty wife of the hacienda owner; ah, the opera house now overgrown by jungle. (Barnes 1984: 104)