The guava's Smell and the red sorghum flavor. Magic realism in Latin-American and Chinese literature

Abstract

Since the 1980s, the author of Hundred Years of Solitude has become a great idol and a constant source of the “anxiety of influence” (as phrased by Harold Bloom) for an entire generation of Chinese writers, including Jia Pingwa, Yu Hua, Su Tong, Yan Lianke, Ma Yuan and Mo Yan. The paper proposes a parallel reading between Gabriel García Márquez and Mo Yan, the Chinese Nobel laureate, in order to demonstrate that the Latin American magical realism and its adventure in China has formed part of Chinese contemporary literature history. Not only has the magical realism revived the memory of these Chinese writers and pushed them to adopt a new attitude regarding their own history, but it has also shown them a way of writing new novels.