This chapter traces the reappearance of key features of literary modernism – especially narrative foretelling and the archival sleuth – in South Asian dictator fiction. It reveals that several techniques credited to Anglo-American modernists became “revenants” in South Asia through affiliative movement toward an unacknowledged middle generation in Latin America. Mohammad Hanif, joined by Salman Rushdie and Mohsin Hamid, portray the specter of political violence in Pakistan by adapting some of the most recognizable traits that boom superstars Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa developed out of their own readings of the North American modernist William Faulkner. Modernist narrative complexity has often been cast as apolitical or even reactionary. In contrast, South Asian authors suggest that such styles undo the easy certainties the dictator offers and uses language to challenge him on the grounds of the literal power to “dictate.” At the same time, Hanif and others use revenant structures to manage the “overheard” quality of writing in English – that is, as a way of addressing two totally distinct audiences at once.

This chapter tracks the development and use of magical realism in South Asia. It argues that realism in the colonial novel grew in a complex fashion, drawing upon elements from fables, myths, puranas and epics. The term's South Asian ‘boom‘ arises in the decolonized context, specifically in the political turmoil of the 1970s, and with the publication of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. While the essay offers a through reading of the novel, it situates Rushdie alongside a host of lesser-known English and vernacular-language writers from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Further, it shows that beyond this time frame the term has been used by writers with tremendous heterogeneity to address social issues ranging from gender, caste, religion, ecology, identity, refugee movements and others. Offering a list of resources, the essay builds a much-needed archive on the vast and diverse examples of magical realism in South Asia.