GABO is no more. Realism wins but his magic is eternal. No literary term has perhaps been so widely talked about and used, often carelessly, as magical realism, the narrative trope Marquez`s fiction has come to be branded with.

Unlike its thematic predecessors in the stockpile of the modern poetics of fiction, like surrealism, absurdism, anti-realism and so on, magical realism is immediately paradoxical, evoking a giddy feeling of the incredibly credible. Marquez`s dizzying narrative strain, which emerges in One Hundred Years of Solitude, runs through In Evil Hour,unleashing monstrous patriarchs, and continues as Love in the Time of Cholera and blooms but never decays in Memories of My Melancholy Whores.

Like an impossible swing in an undulating bolero, or a sudden unbelievable halt in the staccato movements of a tango, the writings of Marquez dance through the paradox of human existence. Everything arises from the solitude of a remote Colombian village but, like all great art, his fiction discovers the universal in the particular. His stark portrayal of the outrageous acts of barbarity, perpetuated by sleazy power maniacs, his unflinching humanism, andhis deeply sensual eroticism, embedded in the throbbing rhythms and vibrant colours of his soil, transcend through the breathtaking craft of his storytelling.

How the art and craft of a literary genius like Gabriel Garcia Marquez comes to influence the creative solitude of generations of other writers is a difficult question to answer. Perhaps, while sharing the ecstasy of the enraptured readers, the writer-self is thrown into an existential and creative crisis by its encounter with the staggering originality of a master. Literary assumptions and creative habitus fall into jeopardy.

You cannot imitate the genius. Yes, you can reject him, but you cannot ignore him. His most celebrated work, One Hundred Years of Solitude, was such a violent intrusion into the complacent life-world of many fiction writers across the continents that it ultimately became an unforgettable personal event for each, with an uncanny feeling that `you are not the same writer anymore.

MIRZA ATHAR BAIG`s latest novel is Hasan Ki Soorat-i-Haal: Khali ... Jaghein ... Pur ... Karo. H e teaches philosophy at Government College University, Lahore