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To Everyone interested in the discussion of magic realism: a handy reference book, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, defines it as "a kind of modern fiction in which fabulous and fantastical events are included in a narrative that otherwise maintains the 'reliable' tone of objective realistic report. The term was once applied to a trend of German fiction of the early 1950's, but is now associated with novelists such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Gunter Grass, Milan Kundera, and Salman Rushdie. The fantastic attributes given to characters in [some novels]--levitation, flight, telepathy, telekinesis--are among the means that magic realism adopts in order to encompass the often phantasmagoric political realities of the 20th century." Linda Lambert, Walnut Hill School, Natick, MA. LLAMBERT@a1.mec.mass.edu