Space, Time, Memory: Magical Realism and Postcolonialism in Hugo Loetscher’s Prose

Abstract

Since the publication of Gabriel García Márquez’ Cien años de soledad (One hundred Years of Solitude) in 1967, Magical Realism has been a style of writing that has aroused great interest both among literary critics and the readership and has been mostly perceived, firstly, as a purely Latin American phenomenon without an equivalent in any other literary tradition, and secondly, as a postcolonial counter-discourse to allegedly typical European rationality. However, the novels of the Swiss writer Hugo Loetscher serve as a perfect riposte to that claims, since Loetscher developed Magical Realism into a powerful creative device for fiction as well as journalism. Thus, Loetscher’s work demonstrates that Magical Realism has transcended the Latin American space and has to be conceived of as a globally acting genre, and as such, it is a characteristic example of World Literature.

With regard to the coincidences of the work of Hugo Loetscher with the genre of Magical Realism, I have, up to now, published two essays: “Topographien der Erinnerung: Auf den Spuren des magischen Realismus in Hugo Loetschers Roman Die Augen des Mandarin.” In Vesna Kondrič Horvat (ed.), Transkulturalität der Deutschschweizer Literatur. Entgrenzung durch Kulturtransfer und Migration, Wiesbaden, 2017: 73-84; “Am Rande jeglicher Konventionen. Hugo Loetschers Romane Der Immune und Die Papiere des Immunen im Kontext des Magischen Realismus.” In Euphorion 112/1 (2018): 71-93.