Spectator competition winners: Love in the Time of Covid-19

In Competition No. 3143, a nod to García Márquez’s 1985 novel, you were invited to submit a short story entitled ‘Love in the Time of Covid-19’ in the magical realist style.

Magic realism has been contaminated somewhat by overuse and is in any case not to everyone’s taste. But if done well it can be wondrous and transporting, and it lends itself well to trauma narratives. As the late poet and translator Alastair Reid wrote of Márquez: ‘What … [he] is showing us all the time is the humanising power of the imagination. In all his writing, the imagination is no mere whimsy, nor a Latin-American eccentricity: it is a way of survival, as we say nowadays.’

This was a tricky challenge but attracted a decent-sized entry nonetheless. As well as the old hands, there has been a surge of newcomers, which is cheering to see. Commendations to Timothy Clegg, Jeremy Carlisle, Margaret Bond, Nick Syrett and Philip Sheahan.