Word: magical
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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This, his most recent novel, combines the fantasy and magic that are the trademark of current Latin American fiction, but also of the author's own brand of passion and sexual intrigue. It is a virtuosic work that takes on a variety of ideas and stories, remaining engaging throughout its many facets. And still it attempts to go beyond its technical workmanship. It has a sympathetic message to deliver, revealed in the closing words: "More than to hug them, I want ... to talk to them ... and it could even be ... that we would understand each other...
Both had come to an end far from where Harvard Captain Peter Chiarelli and his team had heard cheers. Scored goals. Made magic...
...void is Salman Rushdie, author of two fantastical novels, Midnight's Children and Shame, that tell the recent history of India and Pakistan. As an Indian who grew up with his independent motherland in its infancy, and as a fabulist whose bravura acts of invention bring to mind the "magic realism" of Latin American fiction, Rushdie felt himself obscurely allied with the revolutionary government in Nicaragua. Last summer he accepted the invitation of the Sandinista leadership to inspect the seven-year-old revolution. For three weeks he attended rallies, journeyed to the Honduran border and hung out with the comandantes...
...course there are the dark images of the Iranian fiasco: the President's men skulking around, with cake and Bible and guns, on ventures so goofy as to seem unhinged; the tablets of Valium that Robert McFarlane swallowed. The Iran affair destroyed Reagan's nimbus of immunity, subverted his magic. His political authority derived from the idea that Ronald Reagan believed certain simple things profoundly, with an incorruptible candor. He would bob his head, in the way he has, and smile and say, "Here I stand: I can do no other." Martin Luther washed up on the beaches of Malibu...
...talent for characterizing the physical detail and philosophical outlook of Middle America, classed this medievalist-turned-author among the top American writers of the 20th century. Many others, however, found that beneath a flashy surface humour and topicality, Gardner's works lacked the depth of Ulysses or The Magic Mountain...