hysterical realism en · NOUN
Etymology
Coined by English critic James Wood in 2000 to describe Zadie Smith's White Teeth.
Meanings
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(uncountable) 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.
This is not magical realism. It is hysterical realism. […] The conventions of realism are not being abolished but, on the contrary, exhausted, and overworked.
2000 July 24, James Wood, “Human, All Too Inhuman”, in The New Republic, →ISSN: