The Real in the Magic: A Study of Magic Realism in Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990)

While many studies have focused on Salman Rushdie’s use of magic realismin his highly-acclaimed novels, the way it is employed in his children’s fiction remainsunderstudied. This paper, hence, attempts to fill in this gap by applying Anne Hegerfeldt’s(2005)’s theoretical framework on magic realism onto its reading of Salman Rushdie’sHaroun and the Sea of Stories (1990). This framework relies on five techniques or featuresnamely: a realist mode of writing to describe fantastic events and characters, a marginalisedfocaliser, subverted scientific and historical discourses, a supernatural reality and finally,a literal manifestation of a figurative expression. This paper also suggests that Rushdieemploys magic realism to undermine the realist narrative mode as well as scientific andhistorical discourses in order to present an alternative worldview that places narrativeknowledge, gathered from stories with magical characters and events, as a legitimatesource of knowledge regarding the world.