The concept of magic realism is a troubled one for literary theory. l Since Franz Roh first coined the term in 1925 in connection with postexpressionist art, it has been most closely associated, at least in terms of literary practice, with two major periods in Latin-American and Caribbean culture: the 1940S and 195os, in which the concept was closely aligned with that of the" marvelous" as something ontologically necessary to the regional population's" vision of everyday reality," 2 and the" boom" period of the Latin-American novel in the late 1950S and 1960s, where the term was applied to works varying widely in genre and discursive strategy. In none of its applications to literature has the concept of magic realism ever successfully differentiated between itself and neighboring genres such as fabulation, metafiction, the baroque, the fantastic, the uncanny, or the marvelous, 3 and consequently it is not surprising that some critics have chosen to abandon the term altogether. But the term retains enough of what Fredric Jameson calls a" strange seductiveness" 4 to keep it in critical currency, despite the" theoretical vacuum" 5 in which it lies. In Latin America, the badge of magical realism has signified a kind of uniqueness or difference from mainstream culture-what in another context Alejo Carpentier has called lo real maravilloso Americano or" marvellous American reality" 6-and this gives the concept the stamp of cultural authority, if not theoretical soundness. And recently, the locus for critical studies on magic realism has been broadened from Latin America and the Caribbean to include speculations on its place in the literatures of India, Nigeria, and English Canada/this last being perhaps the most startling development for magic realism in recent years, since Canada, unlike these other regions, is not part of the Third World, a condition long thought necessary to the currency of the term in