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Where Reality Slips into a Dream. Magical realism? More like magical confusion.

Following my teacher, Mr. Igor Karpiuk, into the literary labyrinth

Author: Joanna Makowska 


This is an article that blends review, interview, and personal reflection, a mix of forms, just as magical realism blends magic with reality. I have consciously chosen not to follow the strict guidelines usually applied to writing an article. Instead, I will follow in the footsteps of the authors I write about who also refused to stick to traditional patterns.

I embarked on a journey through the world of magical realism, guided by questions I asked my teacher, Mr. Igor Karpiuk, and by my own impressions as I read three books that I would describe as “not good for reading on the bus.” I chose “Ficciones” by Jorge Luis Borges, “Love in the Time of Cholera” by Gabriel García Márquez (since, unfortunately, someone had borrowed the school’s copy of “One Hundred Years of Solitude”), and “Hopscotch” by Julio Cortázar. Each of these authors blurs the lines between waking and dreaming, between reality and magic and between ease and difficulty in reading their works.


Borges: Stories That Make You Wonder If You Even Have Time for Them, and Turn You into a Detective Searching for Meaning


Jorge Luis Borges was an Argentinian writer who lived from 1899 to 1986. He began writing at a young age. In 1905, as a child, he wrote his first story. At the age of nine, he translated Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince, and his translation was published in a newspaper. From early on, he was fascinated by literature, philosophy, and the endless possibilities of imagination. Borges is famous for his short stories that blend fiction and philosophy. Inspired by Plato, Borges believed that reason dictates the laws and that nothing in the world is truly new. As Wojciech Chudy points out in Przez pryzmat ethosu, Borges believed that "There is nothing new in the world, and all new things are merely forgetfulness."


While reading Ficciones, I often found myself wondering: “What am I even reading about?” I gave the story Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote to my father and grandmother. My father told me I had wasted his time and that he had no idea what it was about. My grandmother gave up halfway through. Turns out Borges is the anti-Netflix – zero family approval ! Borges is not easy to read. His so-called "pseudo-essays" play tricks on the reader, referencing currents from the history of philosophy and the complicated relationship between humans and philosophical ideas. I often wondered whether my teacher, Mr. Karpiuk, truly reads these confusing texts for pleasure. When I asked him why he likes Borges so much, he answered: “Because he can create worlds that are extraordinary, incredible. You never know at what point you are dealing with fact and when with fiction.”. And I completely agree. In stories like Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote or in the analysis of the works of Herbert Quain, it’s hard to tell whether the author being discussed is even real. Everything is described with such detail that you start doubting what is true and what is Borges’s invention. And yet, the interpretations (especially the ones I found online) were fascinating and deeply philosophical. I sometimes spent hours trying to understand what a story meant and often had to read it three times before I could even start thinking about it.

As I already mentioned that I had (and still have) a lot of trouble interpreting Borges’s stories. My English teacher, Mr. Karpiuk, kindly offered to help me. That was very nice of him. We read The Library of Babel together. (Spoiler alert: if you haven’t read The Library of Babel, you might want to skip this part and jump straight to Márquez.)

In the story, Borges describes an infinite library. It’s made up of hexagons — sadly, we never find out whether they’re regular hexagons or just vaguely six-sided. At first, we talked about the title. What is Babel? Well, it’s that story from the Bible where people try to build a huge tower to reach the heavens, but God confused their language so they can no longer understand one another. So Babel was once orderly, and then it wasn’t just like the library, which, over time, people begin to destroy and burn out of desperation. (A clear reference to World War II, when the Nazis burned books.) This library contains everything. Literally everything: every possible combination of letters, which means every book that has ever been or will be written is already in there. Mr. Karpiuk said something that hit me hard that I will never read all the books that have been written. We always have to choose what to read and what to leave unread. I had never thought about that in this way. It’s kind of sad. And then there’s the big question Borges asks: are we still able to write something truly new? Or has everything already been written? Are we just repeating ourselves in slightly different fonts?


Márquez: When the Past and Present Dance Together and Time Hits the Hardest


Gabriel García Márquez was a Colombian writer who lived from 1927 to 2014. He was born in the small town of Aracataca, which later inspired the fictional Macondo in his most famous novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Márquez became one of the leading figures of magical realism, blending the extraordinary with the ordinary, the mythical with the real.


CUBADEBATE. “Premio Nobel de Literatura, Gabriel García Márquez, Cumpliría Hoy 91 Años,” CUBADEBATEA, 16 Mar. 2018, www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2018/03/06/premio-nobel-de-literatura-gabriel-garcia-marquez-cumpliria-hoy-91-anos/. Accessed 27 May 2025.His writing often reflects the unpredictability of human relationships, the weight of history, and the blurred line between life and death. As biographer Gerald Martin wrote, “the first novel in which Latin Americans recognized themselves, that defined them, celebrated their passion, their intensity, their spirituality and superstition, their grand propensity for failure.”
CUBADEBATE. “Premio Nobel de Literatura, Gabriel García Márquez, Cumpliría Hoy 91 Años,” CUBADEBATEA, 16 Mar. 2018, www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2018/03/06/premio-nobel-de-literatura-gabriel-garcia-marquez-cumpliria-hoy-91-anos/. Accessed 27 May 2025.His writing often reflects the unpredictability of human relationships, the weight of history, and the blurred line between life and death. As biographer Gerald Martin wrote, “the first novel in which Latin Americans recognized themselves, that defined them, celebrated their passion, their intensity, their spirituality and superstition, their grand propensity for failure.”

Márquez was also a journalist. When he received the Nobel Prize in Literature, he donated part of the award money to support his newspaper, a gesture that said a lot about his roots and what he valued most. After his death in 2014, Colombia declared three days of national mourning, a powerful sign of how deeply his work and legacy were woven into the identity of his country.

His writing often reflects the unpredictability of human relationships, the weight of history, and the blurred line between life and death. In Love in the Time of Cholera, he explores not only the power of love but also the unpredictability of time and the choices that shape our lives, both those we make ourselves and those made for us by others.

While reading Love in the Time of Cholera, I noticed that the story focuses not so much on action or dialogue but on the feelings and thoughts of the characters. It tells the tale of love between Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza. Florentino loved her for over fifty years. She loved him in her youth but, after a moment of clarity, stopped loving him. The novel blends the present with the past. The strongest blows the characters receive do not come from each other but from time itself. At times, I wondered whether Márquez was more interested in telling a story or in capturing the unpredictable phases of love, its changes, its challenges, and the way it can both limit and free us. The book made me reflect on how unpredictable life and relationships can be. We never know what might still happen to us or where the choices we make  and those made for us  will take us.

And perhaps, as Márquez suggests, it is not death but life that has no boundaries.


How to Read Hopscotch and Still Have a Clue (Spoiler: You Don’t)


Julio Cortázar was born in 1914 in Brussels, but he spent his childhood in Buenos Aires. He later became a teacher and translator. It was during this time, while immersed in the works of Borges and other authors, that his passion for literature began to take shape — a passion he would fully express after moving to Paris. Cortázar wrote his novels in bursts of creative madness, as he himself admitted. Each idea struck him suddenly and wouldn’t leave him alone until it was captured on paper. He once described his short story The Occupied House as “notes written down right after a speech in a dream.” His writing is filled with metaphors but not because he wants to say something in a different way. Rather, he uses them because what he wants to say cannot be said in any other way. He tries to reach something that resists being spoken, to get close to the deep, hidden layers of reality. Understanding what he truly means often feels impossible but you can sense it.


Babelio. “Photos de Julio Cortázar,” Babelio.com, 2017, www.babelio.com/auteur/Julio-Cortzar/2074/photos. Accessed 27 May 2025.
Babelio. “Photos de Julio Cortázar,” Babelio.com, 2017, www.babelio.com/auteur/Julio-Cortzar/2074/photos. Accessed 27 May 2025.

The visions in his work are often closer to dreams than to reality, and Hopscotch is perhaps the one of the dreamlike books. The first time I heard my teacher, Mr. Karpiuk, say Hopscotch, I weirdly thought of checkers. I imagined a board and small pieces. So, just so you’re not lost like I was - let’s explain what hopscotch actually is. (And no, it’s not playing checkers.) It’s a children’s game. I never played it, even though I was once a child. But I suppose I still have time. The rules are simple: you draw squares on the sidewalk with chalk, each color representing a different “reality.” Red is “Hell,” green is “Earth,” and blue is “Heaven.” Then, you jump on one foot while moving a little stone across the squares. The first person to reach “Heaven” wins.

Why does this matter? Because Hopscotch the novel works a bit like that game - you hop through it, skip around, try to reach something that may or may not be there. There are two official ways to read Hopscotch: one is from the beginning through Chapter 56; the other starts at Chapter 73, after which you follow a strange chapter-jumping path laid out by the author. I chose the second path — because Mr. Karpiuk said that’s how he first read it. He later reread the book “normally” and discovered a hidden chapter not listed in Cortázar’s instructions. Unfortunately, when I started reading from Chapter 73, I quickly got lost. I didn’t understand what was going on. So two weeks later, I began again - this time from Chapter 1. I guess I won’t have the pleasure of discovering a secret chapter. But maybe that’s what life is like: everyone chooses their own path. Mine started with 1. Mr. Karpiuk’s started with 73. Someone else might begin at 154 - just because they like reading books backwards. It’s just a matter of taste or of the ability to understand what’s going on.

And that’s the strange magic of this book: you can’t really say you read Hopscotch. At best, you have been reading it. This book is like a puzzle in which every piece fits with every other and at the same time, with none. Reading Cortázar feels like playing chess with a cat – it knocks over the pieces, struts around like it won, and you’re left pretending this was somehow profound. It’s a labyrinth you may never escape. Or maybe you’re not even meant to. To me, reading Hopscotch felt a lot like using Google: you click on links and get flooded with information, some of it will be relevant later, some won’t. You’re not sure what matters, what’s decorative, what’s contextless or essential. It’s chaotic, nonlinear, and messy and that’s exactly the point.

Wait, but what’s jazz doing here? Cortázar was a jazz fan but it’s not just that the characters listen to jazz. If that were all, it would be boring. What matters is what jazz represents. I had trouble figuring it out because most of the articles I found were in Spanish. But when I asked Mr. Karpiuk, he said: “Jazz is freedom. It’s improvisation. You can never play a jazz piece the same way twice — just like Cortazar's  stories. They are constant improvisation and change.”


Conclusion: It's Not About the Ending


Have you ever met people who read only the last pages of books? The final chapter, the summary, the big reveal — the part where the murderer is unmasked or everything finally makes sense. Some readers believe that the beginning and the ending are what truly matter. After all, these are the parts authors polish the most: the opening must hook the reader, the closing must leave an impact, maybe even deliver some great idea.

The middle? Well, sometimes the middle just drags like reading The Doll by Prus and when you reach the final page, you wonder: What was the point of all that? Where is my happy ending? You feel disappointed and count the hours of your life you’ll never get back.

But if you ever meet someone in a bookstore - say, at Empik - reading the ending first, give them Borges, Márquez, or Cortázar. From that moment on, they might stop looking for great endings and start reading for the puzzles, the labyrinths, the hidden meanings. And maybe, like in Cortázar’s Hopscotch, they’ll still read from the end but they’ll read the whole thing, because in these books, the ending doesn’t explain everything. What matters is what’s inside. (I’m not criticizing people who read endings. I live with someone like that. I don’t understand it but then again, I also don’t fully understand Borges. So I try not to understand, I try to feel, just like Cortázar wanted us to do. To feel the characters.)

To distinguish magical realism from fantasy: magical realism keeps many realistic features the structure of events, precise descriptions and gently slips in the impossible. Subtly, almost imperceptibly, something is deformed. In contrast, fantasy usually forces the supernatural into the world loudly and clearly, disturbing its order.

As someone who usually reads crime novels and popular science books, it was hard for me to understand why these authors never say anything directly. Labyrinths, libraries, emotions that are nearly impossible to explain to another human being — and yet, these writers try. Their books stayed with me. I kept thinking about them. And eventually, I gave up (I'm not the most patient person) and I started reading interpretations. What others saw I didn't. The ideas they noticed… I never thought books could be written like that. And now I also understand why we don’t read such books in Polish class.

I hope that what I’ve written here is not just a collection of good titles, but also a middle worth reading.

And if you're looking for a recipe for a good book — here’s one, according to Mr. Karpiuk:

  • The mood? Any mood is fine — as long as the book makes you feel something.

  • In every book, you can find at least one sentence that justifies its existence. — Borges

  • And it has to have words. (That part, I added myself — though, on second thought, books made entirely of pictures might be great too.)

    Reality might be dreaming, but at least I stayed awake long enough to write this.




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