The Seattle Times’ review of the the new short story compilation Three Messages and a Warning begins, “What has Latin American magic realism done for you lately?” Sometimes it seems like the literary style, melding the realistic with the slightly fantastic without skipping a beat, is a thing of the past; its champions, like Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortazar, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, are dead or have their best work behind them. This compilation – only $10.66 on Amazon, which, c’mon, is nothing – seeks to reverse that, and bring a collection of Mexican magical realists to a larger, international audience. Check out this video of Alberto Chimal reading from one of his stories, featured in this book.
“Variation on a Theme of Coleridge” by Alberto Chimal from Chris Brown on Vimeo.