In The World That We Knew, the fantastic regularly and unapologetically intrudes on a narrative otherwise grimly realistic. Angels hover above the streets of Nazi-occupied Paris and in the trees of the French countryside; a life-sized doll made of gloppy mud from the banks of the River Spree suddenly glows and comes to life; birdsong is a language, as a heron chats with Ava and even alerts characters of an impending Nazi raid; Azriel, the Old Testament Angel of Death, appears just before someone is to die; wolves in the wild are inexplicably docile, even gentle. The characters accept these fantastical elements without question. In traditional works of magical realism—a genre of experimental fiction that dates to the mid-20th century and found its most sophisticated expression in works of Latin American fabulists such as Gabriel García Márquez and American Nobelist Toni Morrison—straightforward, realistic narratives suddenly introduce elements of the supranatural, the fantastic, the magical. Unlike fantasy fiction, magical realism never abandons the real world; rather, these fabulous elements are matter-of-fact, without intrusive explanations or an exaggerated sense of wonder.

Thus, magical realism imbues the real-time world with the possibility of wonder and enchantment by blurring the boundary between the fantastic and the familiar.