Between the Lines: Magical Realism in South Asian Writing

Published every Friday, Between the Lines is a weekly column by Namrata. This week, she turns to magical realism and how South Asian writing stretches the limits of what we call the real.

For a writer, introducing the impossible is rarely accidental. It changes the terms of the story. It alters what can be believed, what must be accepted, and what no longer needs explanation. Once the impossible enters, the narrative cannot return to the safety of strict realism.

In much of contemporary South Asian writing, this shift feels deliberate but unforced. The magical does not arrive to impress. It arrives because realism, on its own, is not enough to hold what is being experienced. Grief that refuses containment, memory that behaves unpredictably, and histories that do not stay in the past.

To write the magical here is not to depart from reality, but to stay with it a little longer than realism allows.