Book recommendations sought

[Martinus]

Ok, so I'm looking for some book recommendations which are rather specific:  writers similar to Pratchett, Gaiman or Susana Clarke - i.e. thoughtful British softly-leftist magical realism (Pratchett is technically not a magical realism writer but his later books make Ankh-Morpork quite clearly a satire on Victorian England so it counts).

[Valdemar]

Alice in wonderland? 

V

[Syt]

I liked Toby Frost's Space Captain Smith series. Bit like Futurama meets Victorianism. Spoofs a lot of sci-fi.

[Sheilbh]

That's an unusually specific requirement

If you want British magical realism I'd suggest Rushdie - in particular Midnight's Children or the Moor's Last Sigh - or someone like Angela Carter.  Maybe her collection of short stories, the Bloody Chamber is really good, so is Wise Children.

If you want something slightly different I think you'd really enjoy Hilary Mantell's historical novels.  A Place of Greater Safety (French Revolution) is brilliant, so's Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell/Henry VIII).  I've not read her latest which is a sequel to Wolf Hall.

[Gups]

Try Nick Harkaway's two novels - The Goneaway World and Angelmakers.

Possibly Jasper Fforde's stuff.

[Eddie Teach]

I can't recommend anything to your specifications that hasn't been mentioned already, but would add that you should try the Latin American magical realists(Garcia Marquez, Allende, Amado et al) if you haven't already.

[Gups]

For the record Gaiman, Pratchett and Clarke are not magical realist writers.

[CountDeMoney]

If you want British magical realism I'd suggest Rushdie - in particular Midnight's Children or the Moor's Last Sigh -

I don't believe Martinus wants to think too much.

[mongers]

Somewhat linking in with the thread about your local museum, what about the works of Edward Rutherfurd :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Rutherfurd

His first novel was 'Sarum' was about:

......
returned to his childhood home to write Sarum, a historical novel with a ten-thousand year story, set in the area around the ancient monument of Stonehenge and Salisbury.

Four years later, when the book was published, it became an instant international best-seller, remaining 23 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List. Since then he has written five more best-sellers: Russka, a novel of Russia; London; The Forest, set in England's New Forest which lies close by Sarum, and two novels, Dublin: Foundation (The Princes of Ireland) and Ireland: Awakening (The Rebels of Ireland), which cover the story of Ireland from the time just before Saint Patrick to the twentieth century, and finally New York as of 2009.

[Gups]

I read the London one. It was OK but nothing special. It really couldn't be further than what Marty is asking for though.

[Eddie Teach]

what about the works of Edward Rutherfurd :

Enjoyable reads but there's little of the fantastic about them. They're just collections of novellas with a common location and family descent threaded in.

[Brazen]

Try Peter Ackroyd's fiction. As a historian too, he conjures up a realistic background. Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem fits your very specific niche. You'd probably enjoy The House of Doctor Dee too.

[dps]

For the record Gaiman, Pratchett and Clarke are not magical realist writers.

Yeah, they belong much more in the actual fantasy/sf genre than magical realism--if you asked for a writer who writes stuff similar to Pratchett, I think my first thought would be Douglas Adams, whose work isn't magical realism, either.  Other vaguely similar writers would be Glen Cook or Roger Zelany (though I'm not sure if they are British or American, or where they fall on a left/right scale).

Magical realism is kind of a vague term anyway.  For example, arguably the very end of War and Remembrance turns the Wouks whole The Winds of War saga into magical realism, but otherwise it's straight historical fiction.

[Martinus]

Yeah I guess you are right since magical realism has become a technical term which is quite different from these writers. What I'm looking for is a sort of mix of wry humour and "supernatural mixing with mundane" while serving also as a satire. I guess Jonathan Swift with "Gulliver" and Oscar Wilde with "Picture of Dorian Grey" were the fathers of this genre and Gaiman and Pratchett are the modern writers of it. Extra points if it is actually set in Victorian or pseudo-Victorian (which is Pratchett) setting.

[Martinus]

Btw, is it "unambitious" to consider Wilde, Gaiman, Pratchett and Clarke to be one's favourite writers? I like them much more than your ambitious ones, like Marquez.