At the dawn of the 20th Century a few very brilliant minds were hard at work defining and crafting an entirely new genre of literature, one that looked beyond the realities of our lives and took into accounts the works of up and coming philosophers of the time. Writers like Kafka and later Borges developed and crafted one of the most mind bending and subsequently interesting genres of our time; what is sure to the be 20th century’s indelible mark on the history of world literature. These are the greatest of those amazing novels and stories, places where anyone interested in the genre should immediately start their search.
The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka – Kafka was one of the movements founding fathers, a true visionary of the absurd. His tale of a man turned into a giant bug overnight is told with the straight faced allegorical wit of a true master of the new genre. To truly understand the works of Borges, Cortazar, or Marquez you must first read from Kafka.
Labyrinths – Jorge Louis Borges – Borges was a scholar of Kafka, a translator from the German into Spanish, and a student of his methods. It’s small wonder then that he become the father of the Magical Realism genre with his life’s work of short stories so blindingly brilliant in their execution that few would ever dare attempt to follow suit. His work, most poignantly represented in Labyrinths delves into the nature of reality and the nature of eternity and how one thing cannot make sense without the immediate existence of another, and vice versa. The Garden of Forking Paths, a story from this collection is considered to be his most widely read piece.
Blow up and Other Stories – Julio Cortazar – Cortazar was subsequently a student of Borges and the next generation of master in Magical Realism. His work is subtle and tells a vividly painted picture that Borges strayed from in his academically bound fiction/essays. Cortazar took the artform further and produced a novel in the genre, something Borges never did. From Blow Up, “Letter to a Young Lady in Paris” is a must read.
100 Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez – Marquez is the only author on this list to have won the Nobel Prize (though I suspect Rushdie shall some day). Always a writer of picaresque novels, this one in particular was the masterpiece of his career. It found new readership recently when Oprah chose it for her book club, and has been circulating ever since, thankfully. The book tells the 100 year story of the Buendia family through love, prosperity, war, and death.
The Satanic Verses – Salmon Rushdie – Rushdie is one of the most hyperliterate, intelligent writers alive today, making him also a pretty tough order to read, but if you do, it’s more than worth it. This masterpiece of religious thought and the questioning of faith and the defining of reality by the writers of history was so powerful and controversial that it drew upon him a Fatwah by the Shah of Iran, pushing him into hiding for more than 10 years after publishing assistants and more were threatened or harmed. The book is amazing though, and the religious tones aside, it tells an amazing, fantastic story.
Each and everyone of these authors does something special that no one else has done in writing. For that reason they are placed in a category all their one, one in which they find less readership but massive amounts of respect for what they’ve given to the literary community.
