hysterical realism
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English
Etymology
Coined by English critic James Wood in 2000 to describe Zadie Smith's White Teeth.
Noun
hysterical realism (uncountable)
- (literature) A literary genre typified by a strong contrast between elaborately absurd prose, plotting, or characterization, on the one hand, and careful, detailed investigations of real, specific social phenomena on the other.
- 2000 July 24, James Wood, “Human, All Too Inhuman”, in The New Republic, →ISSN:
- This is not magical realism. It is hysterical realism. […] The conventions of realism are not being abolished but, on the contrary, exhausted, and overworked.