Lecture: Exploring the magic of Latin American literature

Dr Bhatti gives an insight into Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s writing style.

ISLAMABAD:

A lecture on Latin American literature came as a refreshing change for students of National University of Modern Languages on Wednesday.

The lecture, given by Dr Shaheena Bhatti, was arranged by the Faculty of Advanced Integrated Studies and Research for students of MPhil in English Literature.

Dr Bhatti gave an insight into the writing style of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a renowned Colombian novelist and short-story writer.

“One of the main features of Marquez’s writing is his narration of the unheard and untold story of the defeated and the vanquisher,” she said while delivering a lecture on One Hundred Years of Solitude, a literary masterpiece by Marquez.

Marquez, she said, was a journalist like many other Latin American authors and would write on political issues. “As Colombia was colonised by Spain, everything was recorded from the coloniser’s point of view,” she added.

Marquez would mesh real stories, witnessed and narrated by the defeated and combine them with mysticism and magic. By doing so, he managed to narrate facts which were otherwise banned by the colonial masters. Initially the novel was banned in Latin America, but today it is widely read, said Dr Bhatti.

Moving on, she explained that “One Hundred Years” signifies the duration of the civil war, civil disobedience, colonisation and political tug of war in Latin America. The novel, she said, has been inextricably linked to a style of literature known as magical realism.

Magic realism expands the categories of the real so as to encompass myth, magic and other extraordinary phenomena in nature or experience which European realism excluded.

She told the students that Marquez, following initial success, published “One Hundred Years of Solitude” in 1967. It follows seven generations of the Buendía family in the fictional town of Macondo. The novel is considered a mainstay of magical realism with magical elements interwoven into seemingly ordinary situations.

Published In The Express Tribune, June 14^th, 2012.