Quaint Fantasy. Apprehension of Michal Ajvaz as an Author of Magical Realism

The thesis deals with a question if it is appropriate to consider Czech writer Michal Ajvaz to be an author of magical realism. His fiction usually incorporates supernatural objects or events into a natural fictional world just as in the fiction of magical realism. The thesis analyses the nature of magic motifs and events in the studied literature, as well as literary techniques, which are used to achieve this specific kind of poetics. By examination of the canonical works of magical realism, such as the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude by G. G. Márquez, The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende or the novel Midnight Children by S. Rushdie, we can specify the structure of this literary genre and compare it to the texts of Michal Ajvaz. In a survey, we focus on two Ajvaz's early novels - the fantastic one The Other City (1993) and the philosophical prose The Golden Age (2001). KEYWORDS Michal Ajvaz, magical realism, magic realism, postmodernism, The Other City, The Golden Ag