Allende’s Mask of Zorro

"Magic realism is not like salt that you can sprinkle on everything," Isabelle Allende says in an interview with Salon about her new novel Zorro. "I have written more than 15 books and there are elements of magic realism only in a few of them. But for some reason, Latin American writers who have used this end up being labeled with magic realism. But really, magic realism is just an acceptance that the world is a very mysterious place and we don’t know all the answers." She also talks about why she accepted the project to write about the fictional masked hero, despite being a "serious writer."

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