Readers who appreciate this story might want to delve into other works by Garcia Marquez. Collections of short stories like Big Mama's Funeral (1962) and The Incredible and Sad Story of Innocent Erendira and Her Heartless Grandmother (1972) are filled with magic realism. His novel One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) portrays the enchanting village of Macondo, chronicling the intricate history of three generations of the town's prominent family. Similar to Love in the Time of Cholera (written in 1985 and set in an unnamed town), Garcia Marquez crafts a dreamlike, multi-layered setting, developed in much greater detail than the village in this brief tale. Many critics still regard One Hundred Years of Solitude as the pinnacle of magic realism.

The collection Labyrinths (1962) by Jorge Luis Borges comprises short fictions, essays, and "parables," offering intriguing parallels and contrasts to Garcia Marquez's style. Although Borges is not typically labeled a "magic realist" and had gained considerable acclaim before Garcia Marquez's rise, he shares similar influences and themes, potentially influencing the younger author. Borges is captivated by paradoxes and humanity's quest for meaning, using concise, well-structured narratives to explore a variety of inventive contradictions filled with hidden insights and unexpected twists.

Since Garcia Marquez's works emerged, writers from diverse traditions have continued to blend fantasy and reality in innovative ways, suggesting the impact of magic realism or originating from similar sources and concerns. Among such works set in America are Max Apple's The Oranging of America (1976), a collection of modern fables examining different facets of "the American Dream" and its contemporary myths of success, and Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo (1970), a satirical "HooDoo detective novel" that ambitiously reimagines the history of Africans in America.

Readers might also be interested in a novel thematically similar to "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings": The Wonderful Visit (1895) by H. G. Wells, the author of The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man, and other notable imaginative works. The Wonderful Visit, which tells the story of an angel wounded and captured by rural English villagers, is described by critic Kenneth Young as "an ironical study of life in the English countryside ... The satire—on ownership, on the ugliness of people's lives—is gentle, though there is a dark passage on 'the readiness of you Human Beings to inflict pain'."