Recollections of Things to Come

"I think it’s one of the most beautiful novels ever written. It’s a love story and also the story of a territory and a very specific moment in the life of the country. It is a metaphor of desolation and despair, where each element is imbued with a very subtle magic, made of voices and memories, above all women’s. In Recollections of Things to Come , the feminine is resistance to a violent, collapsing world. Sure! I think that for the Latin American novel magic realism operated in that period as an excellent strategy to write fantasy in a particular way, with narrative elements that have prevailed in Latin cultures, such as hyperbole or syncretism between indigenous and Christian religious beliefs. The same thing happens in my head when I imagine Tita’s tears filling a five-kilo sack to be used for cooking in Like Water for Chocolate , as when I read traditional fairy stories about a magic tablecloth that serves food, a flask of oil that never runs out, or boots for walking seven leagues. I believe in both equally and with my whole soul."