Chapter 1
Hooking the reader with mystery and mood
Chapter 2
Setting the stage of epic worlds
Chapter 3
Global voices and magical realism
Chapter 4
The power of the simple sentence
YOUR GOAL
Master of Great first lines in literature
Ch 3 · Global voices and magical realism
schopenhauer Global Magical Realism
García Márquez touched a block of frozen fish / and turned it into the legendary ice of Macondo.
schopenhauer Haruki Murakami starts his surreal mystery with an ordinary kitchen chore.
schopenhauer Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart begins by introducing a legendary Igbo warrior.
BETA
schopenhauer Test your literary trivia knowledge with this opening lines game. Can you identify the famous book that starts with the midnight birth of a nation?
Fun Fact
Márquez's magic: Gabriel García Márquez was so inspired by his opening line that he wrote daily for eighteen months straight.
Glossary
magical realism (noun)
A literary style that incorporates fantastic or mythical elements into otherwise realistic fiction. Gabriel García Márquez used this style in the iconic 1967 opening of One Hundred Years of Solitude.
A literary style that incorporates fantastic or mythical elements into otherwise realistic fiction. Gabriel García Márquez used this style in the iconic 1967 opening of One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Quiz
What is the narrator doing when the phone rings in the opening of Haruki Murakami's 1994 novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle?
Quiz
Which 1997 debut novel by Arundhati Roy begins with the lush, rainy landscape of Ayemenem, India, in the month of May?
Quiz
"The river was there" is the simple opening line of which 1971 classic historical novel by Somali author Nuruddin Farah?
Quiz
What substance does Colonel Aureliano Buendía remember discovering in the famous opening line of Gabriel García Márquez's 1967 novel One Hundred Years of Solitude?
Quiz
What specific scent reminds the protagonist of unrequited love in the opening of Gabriel García Márquez's 1985 novel Love in the Time of Cholera?
Quiz
Which 1958 Nigerian novel by Chinua Achebe begins by introducing the famous wrestler Okonkwo?
Quiz
Salman Rushdie's 1981 novel Midnight's Children begins with the narrator being born at the exact moment of which country's independence?
Quiz
"My father had a small estate in Nottinghamshire..." is the opening of which 1719 adventure novel by Daniel Defoe?