One Hundred Years of Solitude - Magical Realism One Hundred Years of Solitude Magical realism is a literary form in which strange, disturbing, and dreamlike tales are told as if the events were all the agenda. Magical realism is the opposite of the "once upon a time" style of storytelling in which the author emphasizes the fantastical quality of fictional events. In the world of magical realism, the narrator talks about the surreal so naturally that it becomes real. Magical realism can be traced back to Jorge Luis Borges, who wrote in the 1920s, according to noted critic Franco (309). Indeed, Jean Franco notes that "the techniques used by García Márquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude are often compared to those of Jorge Luis Borges" Franco (309). However, it was not until the 1940s that Latin American writers began to extensively experiment with new techniques and introduced stream-of-consciousness narrative, unusual temporal sequences, and other devices into the novel. In the 1940s, a group of Latin American writers published works that incorporated new techniques. ...